BAU UK LTD 

John Ross Stirling (director) and Michelle Lorraine Silver (his office manager and common-law wife) have still not paid us back our deposit of over £3000 after not setting foot on the £1500 scaffolding they required us to put up for the work they didn't do. As soon as the work was supposed to start they started coming up with excuses not to do it until they simply cut their phone number and moved business address. The address on Companies House is not their current business address. We have no idea where they operate from. They did move their operations to Green Home Gurus Ltd, which has since dissolved, but they were ripping people off by stealing deposits through that company too. They have 11 ccjs outstanding against them over the various businesses they have used as their cover for their scam. It's now been 8 months and we are still over £4000 poorer...my mum's legacy money! Keep away from these two, they are toxic.

If I could put zero stars, I would. John Stirling and Michelle banked our deposit of £3190 in Nov 2022 and requested we put up scaffolding £1500 to be able to do the work. They never turned up. Scaffolding was up for 6 weeks and there was always a "reason" why work couldn't start. They never phoned to let us know, we had to chase them to even get an excuse. Scaffolding came down and we requested a refund. All communication ceased and we have been chasing them ever since. They have simply stolen our money...and we have found many others they have done this to. Thousands have been taken from innocent victims. They are blatant, lying scum. John's partner, Michelle Silver has set up her own company and John is now continuing to work through her business; Green Home Gurus Ltd. Don't trust her either, they are in this together. Search BAU UK Ltd on FB and you'll find my posts if you want get I touch to let me know your story. Strength in numbers.

Deposit paid, contract signed, date agreed, then nothing. No reply to phones, almost no response to emails (the one about paying back the deposit died in the water).
Another installer stepped into the breach, but still out of pocket for the deposit.
Still trying to resolve, but over 4 months on I am getting nowhere.

I contacted BAU UK to quote for loft spray insulation and work was to commence on 11.07.22. I paid a deposit of £1066 with balance (£2134 to be paid on completion)
It didn’t start well , on day 1 there was a text from this company to say could not proceed due non delivery of chemicals. No revised date given. We phoned on the 20.07 and were told work would be done on the 25.07.
Fitters arrived and fitted the lining but left early that afternoon. Mr Sterling assured us they would be back next day to complete the work but they never turned up.
No contact from them and no reply to our calls. 28.07 we managed to speak to Michelle and asked for John’s mobile number but she declined saying she would ask him to call back but he never did.
29.07. Rang Anthony’s House, their business address but the receptionist told us BAU UK didn’t have an office just a mail drop box but she was able to give us a mobile number.
We phoned but no reply.
30.07 Text reply : will be with you on 02.08 but they never showed up and we decided to cancel.
An Angry Mr Sterling phoned and asked if we wanted our money back. We said yes of course but never received a penny just more lies: ie check your bank account, money refunded etc. we even offered to pay for the lining £400 ( which was by now peeling off the rafters) to reach a settlement if they would refund the balance £666. When they came back with an offer of £240 we realised that they were mocking us.
Nice people to do business with!
Neil (80 yrs old.)

John Stirling and Michelle Silver ran off with our money without doing the work. endless excuses, delays and lies.
He is busy deleting all trace of the company.
He lost CERTASS. Isothane wont touch him.
They could improve the business by paying our money back and the other people they owe money too.
6 CCJs against BAU UK ltd that they are ignoring, over £16000. All from this year.
Been kicked out of the business centres they work from.
Pretty sure these 2 scammers have done this before.
Plenty of short term business between them.
and his misses set up a new one while they ripped people off.
Green Home Gurus.
Bau Uk ltd
Budget energy solutions
Budget triple glazing
Budget solutions group
Kozy Lofts
Foam Kings
Fresh Licks

DO NOT USE. We paid a £5500 deposit and the work wasn't started and John Ross Stirling is completely uncontactable via any means. Now pursuing a legal claim against him for the money back.

Do not use this company. We paid a deposit for cavity wall insulation in December. John came out and did all the prep work on the building early January 2023. He did not return as promised. The office phone is now out of order and no reply to my emails. The company Isothane who suppliers the product John uses has suspended the company from their preferred suppliers list.

Got recommended The Owner and director of BAU UK ltd John Ross Stirling by Isothane. Signed a contract with BAU UK ltd to remove and refit insulation in November last year and paid a £3170 deposit for the work to be done by mid January.
Had scaffolding put up at our expense for £1500.
The owner/director failed to show up repeatedly with no explanation or courtesy phone call.
Business phone number and mobile now not accepting calls and ignoring all other forms of contact, They started ghosting us from the beginning of February this year.
We told the director and the office manager?(John's partner in crime Michelle Lorraine Silver) we didn't have a lot of money, but it looks like they are going disappear with a huge chunk of our savings.
We're now looking at the court process to try and get our money back. We have already sent an LBA. This has been ignored.
Utterly disappointed and feel like a mug for trusting The director and staff of BAU UK LTD.
Their actions have severely affected me and my families mental health as we are not rich. The money they have taken will take years for us to save up and replace, especially during the cost of living crisis. I'm a charity worker and my wife is a PT teacher. Our house needs maintenance urgently that we now can't afford.
*Update although BAU UK ltd still haven't had any meaningful contact with us to resolve this issue (return our deposit for work not done) they have had the time to flag my review...3 times.
It seems they care more about their image than doing the right thing and giving us our money back. I think that speaks volumes itself.
We are aware of many others that have had the same experience as us. Deposit taken - delays - then impossible communication.
We have a CCJ against them along with 7 others.
John is a coward and still refuses to resolve this issue.
He claimed that BAU was going insolvant in march. It hasn't, he and Michelle have been trying to sell all the business assets so they can run away with a little more money without paying their debts.
Since found out they have done this previously with other businessess.

High attention to detail creates trust in the end product.

BAU UK were friendly prompt and clear from the go. The only thing that let me down was the change in original install date. Other than that great service received throughout.

This morning I have Snow on my roof! Great price, terrific service and great result. Tidy, efficient, friendly, great comms.

Excellent work highly recommend. We used BAU UK LTD to replace our bay window. Easy from start to finish, window installed within a few weeks.

Avoid these people at all costs!!!! I think this would be safest for you but at the very least NEVER pay any money up front, and get their work properly checked before paying out.
They don’t answer the phone and on the two occasions I have been outside their address in Petersfield I have not been able to raise anyone. This is a recurring theme with other responses on this site.
We retained BAUUK from Petersfield to replace our loft insulation. Living in Emsworth, only about 13 miles due south they are not so far away. We wanted sheep’s wool insulation and they were the only people who could provide it. They said they would do it within 2 to 3 weeks of us confirming the order. They were very friendly, helpful and constructive, so when they said that we would need to pay them the money to purchase the insulation I agreed. I paid them £1590 on 13/2/22. I didn’t even smell a rat when they told me that I could not pay by credit card!!!!! Another red flag I should have recognised!
Having paid them the deposit immediately they became much less likely to respond to emails in a timely manner and they would not give me a date. On 10 May they finally responded to several emails from me. They said it had taken longer than expected to get the insulation and we finally agreed a date for the installation of 6th July. When I opened my emails that morning I was not completely surprised to find an email stating that their man was ill and now the earliest date they could do it was 8th August. So before I paid them anything they said they would do in 2 to 3 weeks, and 6 months later its going to take 4 to 5 weeks. Needless to say no one turned up, and since then several emails were unanswered. I also called a few times – no answer
I have more time now to deal with this issue. I sent a final email on 16 November telling them to refund my money by the end of the week and no response was forthcoming. I called them on 18 November. As usual no one picked up but I left them a final message.
I have made contact with one person who has had a similar problem. If we can expand the group we will be stronger. I am in the phone book.

3/11/22
No progress on promised refund of deposit.

I’m sad to report that there has been no resolution of this situation.
On 27th September I was informed by BAU that they would refund my deposit of £4166. I was told it would take 28 days for the accounts department to process the repayment. To date, no money has been received despite me sending 3 Email prompts.
BAU is defaulting on their promises and has provided very poor customer service throughout. I need them to address this situation urgently and return my deposit immediately.
Date of initial experience: 15 September 22

We only got the work done by another company after you had refunded our deposit. It needed doing as you had left our property with dozens of holes. If you had done your initial inspection properly you would have found that there was existing cavity wall insulation that needed removing. We were offered a reduced fee as it was your fault and John Sterling DID state that he had an extraction machine on order as he had other customers waiting for the same work. If you don’t offer this service why did you keep making appointments to do the work? Also you would lose a lot of business as you would only be able to provide cavity wall insulation to properties that had never had any. We were NEVER offered advice of other companies doing this work. If that was the case you would have refunded our deposit immediately as you would have been unable to fulfil the contract.

If you have never received contact from the small claims court, why do I have a copy of your response, and why did we both have mediation phone calls? Yet more lies.

The team have been amazing! From the initial consultation with John, to the installation date with the team it’s just been easy process.
The only hiccup was when my date needed to be changed and that was due to John breaking his finger.

I felt a difference in my home straight away with this insulation. The finish has been amazing, doesn’t even look like any work has taken place.
I would definitely recommend this company.
Thank you again

We had seen the handful of negative reviews online, but BAU UK and John came recommended by the heat pump specialist we worked with. We were still a bit concerned and we asked John about the negative reviews, which he explained away to COVID supply issues and unreasonable customers. Now I wish we'd taken the reviews more seriously. After completing the loft insulation and then drilling holes in the walls of our house in preparation for the cavity wall insulation, John left, agreeing to return at a later date.

What followed instead were weeks of excuses while most of our messages and calls went unanswered. First, a member of the team got COVID. Then the brakes on the van stopped working. Then he injured his finger. All of this would have been entirely understandable - if he hadn't been ignoring our messages as the weeks went by. And if there hadn't been a pile of rubbish that he pulled out of the loft and left in our yard, getting steadily more soaked by the week.

We needed the insulation in order to get an EPC rating that would allow us to get a grant for a heat pump, and that had already been scheduled, so we were eager for this work to get done. Finally, after weeks of us calling and messaging and explaining the situation with the heat pump (and John saying he'd come and just not showing up), it happened a few days ago. The result: insulation has leaked into our kitchen and our living room and the bricks that have replaced small vents on the front of the house have been very poorly put in. We're relieved the work is finally done, but we are not happy about how exhausting it was having to chase him to do work he'd agreed to do (he actually spoke with us about other projects he could help us with and we are so relieved we did not go with him) and we're also not happy with the results. When we sent pictures and asked for a discount, we were told we wouldn't receive the EPC rating we needed until we paid. So we were forced to pay full price for work that was sub-par and a very poor level of service.

His responses on here show that he does not take any kind of feedback well, which is not the greatest quality for someone in this role.

Please do what we did not and take the negative reviews seriously.

Update: It's unfortunate that BAU UK feels the need to lie. An email sent to the business on 17 October provided images and details of the work.

I also find it strange that leaving an honest review is called bullying. I tried to give this company and John the benefit of the doubt. I rarely leave negative reviews because I understand that there are often extenuating circumstances and situations out of peoples' control. But the repeated failure to communicate and acknowledge any kind of inconvenience for us (as demonstrated by the defensive replies) is what prompted me to write my reviews. I want to make sure other people are aware of the disappointing and stressful experience we've had, so that they can take this into account when deciding whether or not to go with BAU UK.

Hiring Bau UK for two jobs was a total nightmare.

We dealt with more than a month of delays and cancellations, poor workmanship and errors, and absolutely zero accountability or acknowledgement of any of the issues. The company doing our heat pump has had to get involved to chase John and try to get him to do what we agreed he would.

We asked John about the bad reviews they have online before hiring him and he managed to give me sufficient excuses to make it seem he hadn’t done anything wrong... Now, after hiring him, it’s clear this is a pattern of behaviour and we had the exact same issues others have described.

When we originally hired Bau UK, we were very clear that we had a deadline for the work to be completed and were guaranteed it would be. However, after drilling holes in our outer walls, the insulation was not actually installed for 5.5 weeks. This means that we had rain getting into our walls and the house was much colder... during an energy crisis! They also left a huge pile of rubbish on our garden during this entire time.

During this time, we heard every excuse, including that John had somehow failed to notice an entire wall of our house, meaning that he would need to get scaffolding. I wasted many days when I was told they would come, only to keep chasing all day with little reply and only realising they weren’t coming when I had not heard from them by the end of the day. Many delays were due to (we were told) waiting for deliveries for things they needed to do our insulation, in addition to other jobs that needed to get done despite being told they were coming to ours... but we heard every other excuse as well.

The main phone number does not work – no one answers or calls back and the main email is only responded to when they give an invoice; they ignored all our other communications. Everything goes through John and when he doesn’t have good news, he tends to stop replying. For the last two weeks he ignored nearly all of my calls and once only responded to my texts after he accidentally sent me a text meant for someone else...

Worst of all, the work itself was done very poorly and messily. There is literally insulation pouring into my living room, bedroom, office and all over my front and back gardens. It is everwhere. They overfilled one wall so there is a large crack going down it now. The bricks that were replaced were done so messily that there is now grout all over the front of the house (even one of his workers described John’s work on this as very poor.)

For the loft insulation, the boards are inserted with two or three screws (despite the legs stating they need eight) and in some cases the single top screw doesn’t even go into the loft leg, so they are completely unattached!

When raising all of these issues, all we got were endless excuses and defensiveness. We have sent multiple emails which have been ignored, demanding full payment to receive the certificates we need to prove the work was completed.

In my experience of dealing with John, he lied to me many, many times and even when caught in a lie, he still doubled down. He also seemed to only care about or acknowledge inconvenience to himself and never once acknowledged or apologised for the issues. Customer service (or even common decency) were non-exist. He even tried to claim to trustpilot that he doesn't know what I'm taking about / that I'm a customer (despite me having lots of proof to the contrary, hence why the review is still here...)

He also took every opportunity to try to take on more work, including giving us very incorrect information about a window we needed replaced (thank goodness we didn’t hire him for that!) Even other workers who were here at the same time said he was very rude and arrogant with them and were shocked by his behaviour.

Since he has refused to acknowledge any issues or take any responsibility for his company, he also refused to give us any compensation for the huge cost of all the delays to us (not to mention the time and stress) and the poor work. We are having to file a formal complaint against his company.

I signed three contracts with BAU UK Limited, loft eves insulation, cavity wall insulation and the supply and installation of PV solar panels and batteries, in mid September 2021, totalling about £20k.

During the sales process the sole director of BAU UK Ltd. comes across as knowledgable and attentive. Once contracts were signed and deposits paid communications become strained and intermittent. Getting timing estimates on the work became difficult.

The first job was the loft eves insulation. This took double the time estimated. The guys doing the work didn't seem to know the equipment they were using. The sole director of BAU UK Ltd. had failed to inform me that we would have a truck parked in front of the house, with equipment that makes a very loud noise, for about a week. I would have warned the neighbours if I had been informed!
However the job itself was ok, and achieved the objective.

The second job was the cavity wall insulation, same guys, similar equipment (very noisy!), and double estimated time. They made a real mess, spraying insulation material all over the place, and not finishing the job properly, many snagging points uncompleted. The cavities were insulated but the job rating was a three, at best!

Now for the solar contract. Having been pressing for a date for the solar job, I had a random call from the sole director of BAU UK Ltd. "would tomorrow be ok for the solar installation"! I agreed and it was installed quickly and efficiently and was operational on September 29th 2021.

The day after, 30th September I paid the balance on the contract to BAU subject to the remaining items to be fixed as set out in emails to BAU on 29th September 2021, 12th October 2021,15th November and subsequent emails. Some, but not all of those items were fixed.

Unbeknown to me up till this point, BAU had sub-contracted the installation to another company (EEH) to supply and install the system. On 27th November EEH called to inform me that they had not been paid by BAU, even one penny, for my entire installation.

On re-reading my contract with BAU this meant that BAU could not deliver ownership title to me for the installation - Clause 14.1 of the contract. Having paid in full I did not own any of the kit installed in my house! That also meant that BAU was unable to pass me any insurance backed warranties, support and the all important MCS certification, that was promised as part of the contracted delivery. I could not therefore register for the power export payments (SEG) because one needs an MCS certificate to do that.

The same day I called the sole director of BAU UK Ltd to discuss the issue and he put the phone down on me! Subsequently, I tried numerous times to call the sole director of BAU UK Ltd and have written numerous emails, even offering to help solve their problem, but the sole director of BAU UK Ltd has avoided any and all contact with me, up to present.

I was informed by EEH that a payment from BAU to EEH was made in December 2021 for about half the installation cost, but that did not clear the problem. I understand that EEH are pursuing their outstanding payment in the courts.

I am now also to lodge legal proceedings demanding specific performance of the contract, payment of outstanding monies to EEH or a refund of the balance of monies paid under the contract so that I can make appropriate payments to EEH (so that I can own the installation on my house and get the subsequent support, guarantees and power export payments that I have paid for in full).

I have sent numerous emails to the the sole director of BAU UK Ltd. and the company. I have remained factual and courteous throughout and given them every opportunity to sort this out. Eventually I emailed informing them that if the issue is not sorted out I will be applying to the court for enforcement with damages and costs applied.

I have not posted anything on TrustPilot until now as I was giving BAU a little time to sort this out. But they have made no efforts to do so.

Today I was alarmed to see from other postings that this seems to be BAU's modus operandi.

I have today (18:10:2022) been asked to delete the contact names from this review. I have replaced the name with “the sole director of BAU UK Ltd” as it is important to the reader to know.

Great communication, very helpful and accommodating for the job will definitely recommend. John himself was on site to answer and assist with any questions.