Paul R

My young son was bought a Yo Sushi gift voucher for his birthday, but was unable to make the trip to use it until a year later. Within three weeks of the expiry date we made contact with Yo Sushi to try and extend the card. Yo Sushi were extremely, quick to share their terms and conditions but seemed unable to recognise that this discussion involved a customer - and, indeed, a customer who was a child.

We have tried to buy Yo Sushi vouchers as birthday presents for many years, to give children of our friends a special meal out to look forward to, and because we have wanted to support the hospitality sector, in particular after 5 difficult years. Yo Sushi’s response to this situation left us all feeling extremely negative about its brand as a retailer. I certainly would not recommend to others investing in gift cards with this retailer, based on our experiences.

Great value (very competitive prices) and fast despatch and delivery. Very happy with my purchase.

We operate a large UK group, which has been a Worldpay customer for some years. Though nothing has changed in our business, Worldpay has been going through a periodic update of KYC (customer due diligence), as all financial services businesses must, and which I fully understand. However, it has implemented a new approach to KYC which simply doesn’t work for customers. We partner with a number of high street banks, large financial institutions and professional services firms, all of whom have the same regulatory requirements, and who all always complete new / refreshed KYC on our group quickly and without issue.

Although we answer Worldpay requests immediately, this then goes into a period of silence for weeks at a time. The exercise has gone on for so many months that Worldpay has stopped releasing funds to us until completed. At the date of writing it has been holding hundreds of thousands of pounds of company money for more than a month. Its only justification is that its KYC update is not yet completed. This is only because of the poor Worldpay process and delays their side - at any point in time nothing is outstanding, and any new request raised is typically answered within 24 hours.

The verifications team undertaking the KYC exercise are unstructured and disjointed in their approach and unclear. Worst of all, they seem to have no set timelines within which to complete reviews despite an overall deadline on the customer to complete the process. This means that if not completed in time customer facilities become temporarily blocked as has happened to us.

The verifications team is “not trained to talk to customers”’ so cannot be accessed to chase or discuss process. They ignore any email sent to them - their only response will be a new, unconnected, request several days or weeks later with no reference to any previous request.

A customer service team is in place to handle customer calls, but even they are not allowed to talk to the verification team so their only role seems to be to apologise to the customer and send a chasing email to their colleagues. These chasers also seem to have no effect, and repeated promises to get back in touch with an update are then consistently broken

There appears to no accountability at any level with Worldpay to intervene - I have tried for 6 weeks to escalate this through complaints processes to unlock this the situation. Nobody can provide any meaningful updates on timelines or the process - the KYC team seem to have free rein to take as long as they wish without consequence.

I have spent decades as a director in large organisations, and Worldpay’s customer service and processes have been amongst the worst I have ever experienced in my time in business.

If you are considering moving to Worldpay, please know that it is not without future risk of an experience like this one. If you are an existing Worldpay customer, I would strongly recommend carefully considering your dependency on your card acquiring partner and the appropriateness of having a contingency plan in place.

Once again, sound advice and excellent customer service from Christopher Pratts.

We have been periodic customers of Pratts for more than 20 years and it’s great to still to have such a lovely, family-owned showroom - with a good range of high guality products at reasonable prices - on our doorstep.

We were buying a mattress which can often be a minefield, and I’m not the most enthusiastic shopper at the best of times, but David T provided excellent advice. He was helpful and clear in setting out the different things to think about and product features, meaning we filtered down to the right product quickly, with no pushy sales. He was particularly helpful in making sure that our product would fit into the house - and was flexible when we needed to change the order to address this.

Thanks, David and the Christopher Pratts team, for continuing to look after us.

Really easy to open a new account - because of the clever integrations and data sources. The app is great and much more intuitive and reliable than most other banks’ offerings I’ve experienced in the past - even (/especially) the most established banks. Great rates of interest too.

Great service over three different orders. All were great value for money; appear to be very good quality; a wide choice relative to other retailers; and very quick delivery. Definitely recommended.

Good value for money. Rapid delivery. Seem like great quality products. Were very helpful when I called with an enquiry.

So far I have only had a zoom-based virtual design appointment, which worked surprisingly well and Jobin Jose did a good job of explaining the options and coming up with creative solutions for an awkward alcove.

Post-lockdown survey and final installation are both still to take place and I will update my review after that. I'm hoping for a high quality service though - I have used Hammonds once before and was very pleased.

I could write a review of my experiences of Virgin Media over recent years which would go on for pages, and it wouldn’t include a single positive comment. I had previously been a Virgin Media customer (phone, broadband and TV) for 15 years and had been happy. For the last 2 years it has been the worst service company I’ve ever had the misfortune to have to deal with.
* The broadband service is appalling - down more than it is up. Issues are logged as “intermittent outages” which means that you have broadband sometimes, when it suits them. Because they provide broadband at least some of every day, this is good enough to sit outside of the Ofcom rules -which require complete loss of service for at least 2 full days before qualifying for compensation;
* VM customer services are absolutely dreadful: almost unreachable and if you are willing to stick it out for long enough (typically 30-60 minutes or more in a queue), you’ll be strung along, passed around VM teams, referred to other channels of communication which don’t work at all; promised compensation to avoid conflict which after the event is withdrawn, fed conflicting information and, worst of all, told things consistently by different members of staff that turn out to be categorically untrue. To be fair to the VM team they only share what they themselves are told by their systems, but the business’s strategy seems to be built upon ‘getting away with it for as long as possible without getting found out’.

On trying to exit your contract, they will try everything they can to talk you out of it and get you to commit to a contract for another 12 months (locking you in to another year of shocking service), and failing that will turn to dishonest tactics to make you stay: only cancelling part but not all of the contract; adding additional restrictions that have never been shared previously and aren’t in your contract; not answering calls when you call to try and deal with it; saying they need to pass you to another team who are ‘very busy at the moment and so might not be able to answer for a while’...

The only time I ever managed a prompt response was when I cancelled my direct debit, when they were on the phone within 30 minutes of the start of the working day.

I can’t recommend enough *not* starting a contract with this company.

My interaction with Preston Baker’s Oakwood branch has been as a potential buyer, so I can’t comment from a seller’s point of view. From what I have seen though, the agency has a very credible position in the North Leeds property market, with a good share of the high-quality, interesting properties for sale.

Listing particulars on the website and given out at viewings give lots of clear, relevant information - including video tours on the website for certain properties which bring them to life. Communication is good, with helpful buyer briefings beforehand, reminder calls/texts, and quick follow-up afterwards. These calls encourage open discussions about pros and cons without hard-sell. Amelia in particular has been very helpful; although I’ve spoken to several of the team who are similarly easy to deal with.