I don't have much faith in reviews and review sites in general, with a few exceptions. Trustpilot is pretty good, although the dealer reviews are littered with transparently bogus "customer experiences". Fortunately, they're are easy to spot because they all look the same, avoiding detail of any kind in order not to be "found out".

I bought a garden bench last year, and when I started to assemble it I found that the bolt holes didn't line up, some bolts were missing and there was woodworm in one of the panels. I couldn't be bothered with the 20 mile round trip required to take it back, so I put it together as best I could and treated the woodworm, then posted a sarcastic but totally non defamatory review for the item on their website. It never saw the light of day.

Edited by argybargy on 19/02/2018 at 08:46

Phoned them direct and asked them to delete all information held on me and would never use their website or services again.

Have done the same with other suppliers for other goods too, after poor service.

The new GDPR regulations, right to be forgotten will come in handy!

You cannot beat independent review sites. Those run by, or closely affilliated to the manufacturer/product supplier are always bound to delete critical reviews to give the impression their product or customer service is better than it really is. Those that do appear on retailer websites I take with a pinch of salt. That said, I find many reviews on Amazon appear grouped together for similar products, so again, can be misleading.

I just wish the estate agent who handled my recent sale had a presence on an independent web site......

I really hate the sites that have a "we want your feedback" box, and having filled in a complaint there is no response whatsoever.

Got an email (survey) from the RAC the other week, well, it was from a 'third party' acting on the RAC's behalf after I renewed my breakdown cover, but I wasn't sure if it was genuine or a fake (not unheard of) with viruses or taking me to a phishing /malware page. I looked on the RAC website and they had no subjects to 'contact them' for me to ascertain whether this email was genuine or not, so I 'used' their contact us for a FOI request (the nearest I could think of), and hey, guess what, I filled in all the details, wrote a short-ish request, and it kept saying 'enter info here' (which I had done). No other way to contact them other than by phone, and given their poor showing at renewal time, and the normal ineptitude of such staff, I doubt they would have even known about this survey or who was doing it.

Customer service in this country is woeful, aside from a few bright spots.

To be fair to HJ and his team, this site is not a pay site and likely does not make £££ even after their ad revenue, so we just have to pitch in and help where we can - I need to contact them as I noticed some errors on some car specs/models available.