Dominic Parkinson

We got very professional guidance from Curtains Made Simple, then we delivered our fabric to them and they made up the curtains to top quality and exactly to specification. Thanks! A reliable company in a sector that has a lot of dodgy operators.

26/02/2025 I placed an online order for a bog-standard order of a single item. Poles Direct aka Interior Goods Direct immediately confirmed the order and stated 'production process can start within one hour of you placing an order.'

It's now more than five weeks later and there has been zero action from Poles Direct. No communication except (sporadically) replies to my 'what's going on?' emails. No statement other than complete falsehoods about proposed delivery dates and about reasons for the delay.

I've got no problem with an order going wrong: could be easily remediated by communication, honesty, seller cancelling an order ... but in this case Poles Direct aka Interior Goods Direct has wasted a huge amount of my time by their monumental incompetence. ABSOLUTELY AVOID these timewasters.

26/02/2025 I placed an online order for a bog-standard order of a single item. PolesDirect immediately confirmed the order and stated 'production process can start within one hour of you placing an order.'

It's now more than five weeks later and there has been zero action from Poles Direct. No communication except (sporadically) replies to my 'what's going on?' emails. No statement other than complete falsehoods about proposed delivery dates and about reasons for the delay.

I've got no problem with an order going wrong: could be easily remediated by communication, honesty, seller cancelling an order ... but in this case Poles Direct (aka maybe Interior Goods Direct) has wasted a huge amount of my time by their monumental incompetence. ABSOLUTELY AVOID these timewasters.

Yesterday was typical of my experience: digital display at Brookes bus stop says (contrary to online) that the next coach is in 18 mins time. OK, plenty of time for a quick coffee at Brookes which took just 10 minutes. As I got back to bus stop 8 minutes before the supposed arrival time, the display was still saying 18 mins to next coach. And 2 minutes later, with '18' still on the board, the coach arrived. So I caught it by sheer luck, by thankfully not relying on the board. Bad info is worse than useless... much better to just say 'info unavailable' rather than random rubbish.

On the bus my digital ticket was not displaying on my phone. Just an Oxford Tube app error message with nonsense about my phone time zone being wrong. Driver says 'oh yes, it does that, just restart your phone'. That fixed it. 'I think that's a bug in your app?' 'No it's just that that's how it works, it's fine if you know how!' (he was serious!).

There's so much wrong with UX of this website. And some absolutely basic features seem to be missing. For example ... I occasionally top up school meals balance when I get opaque email request from IpayImpact to do so. But where is any list of daily credit balance or amount spent on a meal?

As an example one day lists the following:
'SAVOURY £1.70 x1
Radnor Fruit x2
Global Eats £2.40 x1'

So that meal costs £4.10 plus whatever (anomalously unspecified) 'Radnor Fruit x2' costs.

On another day:
'MAIN MEAL x1'

Cost: completely unknown.
Credit balance: completely unknown.

As a web designer I would find it quite hard work to design a website with such omissions and inconsistencies!

The staff were helpful, fiumicino airport pickup was convenient, no hidden extras/pressure. Be aware of office closing time ( in fiumicino: 22:00 or 23:00?) because even if due to flight delay closed means closed... I was close to this cutoff when collecting.

I bought a Silentnight electric blanket that arrived with a fault. OK, these things happen, and after a few rounds of emailing I was able to get Silentnight to send a replacement. Replacement had a different fault (to do with the operation of the switch). Trying to get Silentnight to take note of this (as much for their quality control tracking as for getting replacement or refund) is a nightmare. Customer services sends out templated emils that don't recognise that any previous interaction has occurred. Asking them whether they can see earlier correspondence merely results in same reply. Brand reputation appears not to be a concern to Silentnight.

I am British, live in UK, booked car rental for Rome via CarRental8. I was very careful to read all the terms and conditions, and even contacted customerservice at carrental8.com to be absolutely sure about whether or not I need an international Driving licence. There followed a hilariously whacky thread of communications in which I repeatedly ask whether I need int'l licence, and am repeatedly told that UK licence suffices. Then when I turn up for the rental I get surcharged very nearly as much as total original rent because supposedly CarRental8's terms state that I need Int'l licence! (fyi UK licence is fine for driving in Italy, except apparently for when renting via CarRental8). So I get back to CarRental8 asking why I was surcharged. Same person as had assured me UK licence is OK (Genet) replied back: "We regret to know that you were charged for the international driver's license. The terms and conditions, clearly state the following:...
You and all Additional Drivers must have an International Driving Permit in addition to your National Driving Licence if it is not issued by the country where you are renting the vehicle." Totally contradicting what Genet had told me in writing, and clearly wrong as e.g. someone from e.g. France would not be needing Int'l driving licence to drive in another EU country e.g. Italy (though this latter contradiction is inapplicable to my specific case).

If you rent through CarRental8 there is no amount of double-checking and due diligence that will ensure that when you turn up for the rental something utterly ridiculous like this doesn't happen to you.

Seeking simple but important answer about whether spare part available for an Amica cooker. Despite trying to contact Amica via multiple channels, zero response. For me this means that even simple faults in Amica ovens cannot be repaired.

Seeking simple but important answer about whether spare part available for an Amica cooker. Despite trying to contact Amica via multiple channels, zero response. For me this means that even simple faults in Amica ovens cannot be repaired.

Apollo ('Provider on UK GOV Website') is listed at Covid testing network as offering £25 covid tests. The low price gets them high ranking in search results. Click through and you can enter all info (names, dob, passport etcetera for every single test needed, e.g. type 10 sets of details for family of 5 needing 2 tests each, THEN you get to the payment page and find that the code supplied is £4 discount per transaction, not per test. NOT a £25 test. BY the time all info has been entered there would be a strong chance that despite massive annoyance at being ripped off, the customer will proceed with transaction. I contacted Appollo to ask them about this and they replied that yes it's £25 ... if one orders just one test. That would be fine if this was stated but it's not. Apollo clearly gaming the system, wasting people's time in pursuit of ripping them off by amounts that are not sufficient for most people to bother to report them to ASA or trading standards. I urge you to buy elsewhere.

Test providers who pay click-through fees rank higher in the listings. And if a test provider gets a high ranking based on low price, and that low price is wrong (as is the case with apollotesting.com on 12/10/2021) there is no obvious way to feed this back to covid19-testing.org who seem to not want to know of any issues with the veracity of the claims that test providers make.

After using various glazing suppliers in Oxford over the years finally I've found one that stands out above the rest! Very happy with Oxford Glass.

Coronafocus/Oncologica sold me covid-19 testing kits. I received the kits, but when I requested receipt for the transaction Oncologica sent me into an endless loop of
Them: "We've requested this to be sent to you from out accounts department"
and
Me: "You have NOT sent it, plase send receipt".

Oncologica sold me covid-19 testing kits. I received the kits, but when I requested receipt for the transaction Oncologica sent me into an endless loop of
Oncologica: "We've requested this to be sent to you from out accounts department"
and
Me: "You have NOT sent it, plase send receipt".

After a long wait we got our paddleboards delivered, great ... then a couple of months later came the demands from FedEx for £109.44 unpaid import tax (including penalty for this not already having been paid by sender) DK to UK! must be and error I thought, contact Coolsnow, response is basically 'read the small print, this is what you signed up to'. Did I? Where? Looking back at my screengrabs of website at time of purchase, and indeed Coolsnow / Coolsurf website 16/09/2021, and order emails and attachments, I don't see any mention of extra tax payable post-delivery, just a UK-oriented simple pricing scheme with nothing to raise concern. NB I'm not denying that there may (though I've not found it) somewhere be some techicality mentioned in the small print, but obvs consumers don't consult lawyers/accountants to pick though contracts before making a simple purchase. If same has happened to you PLEASE SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE, otherwise sufficiently dodgy businesses will see no reason to not rip people off.

After a long wait we got our two paddleboards delivered, great ... then a couple of months later came the demands from FedEx for £109.44 unpaid import tax (including penalty for this not already having been paid by sender) DK to UK! must be and error I thought, contact Coolsnow, response is basically 'read the small print, this is what you signed up to'. Did I? Where? Looking back at my screengrabs of website at time of purchase, and indeed Coolsnow / Coolsurf website 16/09/2021, and order emails and attachments, I don't see any mention of extra tax payable post-delivery, just a UK-oriented simple pricing scheme with nothing to raise concern. NB I'm not denying that there may (though I've not found it) somewhere be some techicality mentioned in the small print, but obvs consumers don't consult lawyers/accountants to pick though contracts before making a simple purchase. If same has happened to you PLEASE SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE, otherwise sufficiently dodgy businesses will see no reason to not rip people off.

We eventually got our two paddleboards delivered, great ... then a couple of months later came the demands from FedEx for £109.44 unpaid import tax (including penalty for this not already having been paid by sender) DK to UK! must be and error I thought, contact Coolsnow, response is basically 'read the small print, this is what you signed up to'. Did I? Where? Looking back at my screengrabs of website at time of purchase, and indeed Coolsnow / Coolsurf website 16/09/2021, and order emails and attachments, I don't see any mention of extra tax payable post-delivery, just a UK-oriented simple pricing scheme at a .co.uk domain name with nothing to raise concern. NB I'm not denying that there may (though I've not found it) somewhere be some techicality mentioned in the small print, but obvs consumers don't consult lawyers/accountants to pick though contracts before making a simple purchase. If same has happened to you PLEASE SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE, otherwise sufficiently dodgy businesses will see no reason to not rip people off.

No right to repair a 13-month-old dishwasher. Hotpoint refusing to let me know meaning of a simple error code (e.g. may signify 'pump fault' or 'heater fault' ... knowing this enables repair). Daily Reference Guide for model 'Hotpoint HBC 2B19 X UK' points to Use and Care Guide for error codes, but Hotpoint not able/willing to find the Use and Care Guide. Hotpoint made it clear to me that an error code (despite this basic info being presumably included in the supposedly public Use and Care Guide - not a technical manual for engineers but simply a consumer pdf that tells you e.g. whether there is no water supply to machine) is not something that non-Hotpoint engineers have the right to understand. Remarkable!

SurveyBase did excellent work on Topographic and Measured Building Survey on two properties. Very pleased with the professionaism of the on-site team and the CAD modelling. Great value. Am planning to keep using SurveyBase.