Citizensadvice Reviews 

Spent over an hour to get through to someone who had no practical advice. Don't waste your time as you will be told to go to a service which you have to pay for, even if you don't have funds for that. The UK is a broken country that doesn't care about its own people

Checked the website for CA Cramlington and it said walk ins welcome, open till 12.30pm. I'm not good on the phone so I finished work at 12 noon, ran to their office, and got there at 12.15. They were stood there with there coats on about to leave. I asked if I could make an appointment. They said no but I could go back in a week as they are only open Monday 9-12.30pm in Cramlington unless I went to a different town on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. I said I worked mornings and had rushed to get there for 12.15 and I only wanted to make an appointment to discuss an issue, while they were still open. They told me to phone for advice. I'm not great on the phone I prefer face to face so I asked if I could make a face to face appointment (it says on their web site you can do this). They said no they were going home. If they'd given me an appointment I would have taken time off to get there in plenty of time. They were more interested in an early finish than me.

45 minuets online waiting for an adviser, when finally one came on they asked 2 questions before the message appeared saying that I had been cut off, not a good service when you need advice.

Hello
The nice lady helped me greatly with my issues, She couldn't be more helpful.
Many thanks.
Mr PR Singh.

I was on the phone for over an hour explaining a desperately critical situation about how a Client Care Director of a Law Firm about their conduct in hanging up and being rude and blocking my number as a homeless client with a Landlady in contempt of court for over a year and this young male call handler gave me a few useless numbers/avenues that I have endlessly exhausted in the past like the Legal Omubudman, Solicitor's Regulation Authority and EASS. I gave him so much detailed information and then he went away, came back and suggested that the Law Society can give a free 30minute consultation. This is a complete lie which was I was surprised that he had said something actually helpful because it turned out to be completely false. To make it worse, his attitude towards me over Police torture and my free speech and my transgender sister turned cold and unpleasant....Utterly USELESS and so much for a follow up customer survey! They are always USELESS in these critical situations where people need help.

The chat person (or bot?) refused to answer a question asked on behalf of an unnamed (anonymous) other person, and was abrupt (rude).

On chat, 1hr 45 mins later "sorry you need to ring up the national 0800 number to speak to another adviser". Rang the 0800 number, over 2 hrs later listening to silly whistling tune and draining my battery "sorry Im going to have to pass you to someone else"
Whoever is funding this organisation, it's a pointless waste of time for most of us judging by these reviews, so might as well shut it down....

Having worked for the organisation for a lot of years I would like the opportunity to put the record straight. Firstly the tax payers do not pay for the service. Citizens Advice is a charity, they have to fund themselves by fund raising, most people using the service never donate anything.
The advisors are highly trained and have a lot of experience, also most are not paid for the work they do.
ICitizens advice do not give legal advice, but most bureaus do make the effort to find out which local solicitors to them offer no win no fee or initial free advice.
People come in with lots of different issues which we do our best to help with. We don't have magic wands but we do want to help.
We had a lot of users who wanted to claim pension credit after last year's winter fuel cut. It was hard for us to have to tell people on a full state pension that their income was too high. We were though able to point people in the direction of what other benefits they might be able get, these they will keep even though the rules around winter fuel benefit is more relaxed this year..
How many of the service users would give up their time free to do what we do?
We do get abuse, threats when people find out they are not entitled to some benefits. We treat all users the same doing the best we can. We network with other ch iarities so that we are able to met help to our clients. Im

Great help and advice from Catherine today from Walton citizen advice. I really needed guidance regarding my mums injury although she personally couldn’t help, she did all she could to get me the help I needed and the contacts that could help. I really appreciate it and hope she gets the recognition she deserves!
Thank you

I was given advice regarding a business to business contract, when i called back the advice given was completely different. No one seems to know what to do and this left me in a very difficult position.

The service is totally amazing, they can't do enough to help with all kinds of issues. I can't thank them enough and would recommend anyone to contact them.
First Class.

Every time I have contacted Citizens Advice have all been an indictment of this organisation. The ways in which they let me down on MULTIPLE OCCASSIONS, including regarding serious issues, has been appalling. They fail in many areas; e.g. giving wrong information, agreeing to send important information on my behalf to an organisation and never sending it; impossible to reach people . . . the list goes on. I STAY AWAY from them because I don't want my life being made more difficult.

Don't waste your time contacting Citizens Advice. I think they should be closed down because they are not what the taxpayers' money is for. I don't know why they exist. They are not impartial, they discriminate, both on health issues and on race. Their attitude and expertise on the issues is 0. We have asked them for help before and they refused. We contacted them now because Scoop, Headway and several other organisations said we should contact them. We asked for help for the following reasons but again they fell on deaf ears.

My husband had a serious accident at work and as a result of the accident he became disabled and unable to work for the rest of his life. A roller shutter warehouse door that was rolled up fell on my husband, weighing over 1000kg, and the support structure broke. The size of the door is about 4x6 m, about 6-7 m high. After that, he was resuscitated several times, and suffered several permanent health injuries.

- he was in a coma after the accident
- permanent brain damage (corpus callosum brain damage, numerous effects)
- permanent spinal injury (his vertebrae were broken and damaged from T4 to T12, nerve damage was diagnosed, and the L5-S1 vertebra was displaced, irritating the nerve)
- several rib fractures on the right and left sides
- permanent shoulder-scapula injury (fracture with splinter)
- bilateral lung collapse
- his spleen was removed
- his kidneys, liver, intestines were damaged
- he contracted sepsis in the hospital
- etc.

After that, we hired a law firm that did not represent my husband's interests, and my husband did not receive the necessary compensation for his injuries, the lawyer denied his permanent health damage, setting them up as an old age disease. My husband would need surgeries, which they could not perform due to emergency surgery after the accident, but the lawyer did not have these performed either, citing:

- the defendant does not allow

He does not receive adequate medical care. We are constantly looking for law firms so that we can file a lawsuit against the former law firm for legal professional negligence, but as soon as the law firms find out which law firm should be sued, they will not take on our case. A lawyer took on our case, then after 16 months withdrew from our case citing the following:
- my husband and I will not go to court due to my husband's brain damage
- we are not English and all documents need to be translated for us
- an interpreter needs to be provided
- our case is very complicated

Unfortunately we are constantly being discriminated against, due to my husband's medical condition and because we are not of English origin.
We currently only have 3 months left for our case to go to court. After that there is nothing we can do.

We currently live in a 3 storey house in which my husband is no longer able to move due to the severe pain and limited mobility caused by his injuries.

After the accident we tried to exchange the house, the answer we got was:
- my husband is not sick enough to exchange the house

Then a few years later, on one occasion they wanted to exchange our house for a house that was also not suitable for us due to my husband's health condition.

What we wanted to ask Citizens Advice for help with:

- Finding a No Win No Fee lawyer
- To exchange our house for a house that is suitable for my husband's health condition

But of course again no help.

Although I did managed to have contact both by phone and email from citizens advice, I am struggling to see how they offer help at all. They advise of basic common sense and think in the 21st century a complaint letter to the company you are reporting will solve all your answers. I reported a company 3 times over a 3 month period for fraudulent activity and have heard nothing back from trading standards, which apparently they are not entitled to do. Again do not see the point of contacting either as you will not get any help. Just another waste of our tax payers money.

tried to speak to someone at the epping branch and woodford branch - will phone me back in 10 days. this organisation is the bigest way of money and should be closed.

the reviews are terrible -

I can't thank Lucy enough for all her help. She made our experience so much easier, especially when we were stressed about the move. She went above and beyond, even helping us with things on our phones. We really appreciate her kindness and efficiency. Five stars all the way!

Absolutely awful service, the service I received was slow and an absolute waste of time, the correspondence was mostly by email and the time it took to receive a reply was days and days. The CAB in Picton Road, Liverpool is absolutely awful.

OK well I had previous done a somewhat unfavourable review with reference to Beeston citizen advice but am beginning to believe that perhaps I was impatient and too quick to judge the performance without waiting for a result I have a pending payment for house hold support fund due next week and am on a waiting list for white goods I.e. new washing machine so I would like to say a big thank you for the time and effort put in to helping me and if I knew how would retract my previous review 😀 thanks

Hastings citizens advice are patronising rude. Extremely unprofessional with sensitive legal documents of extremely personal nature. I still am processing the arrogant patronising comment from one of the volunteers .

Wouldn’t listen to our report of being victims of rogue trader fraud. Didn’t list it correctly or send to trading standards. Failed to report 13 victims of an undischarged bankrupt with nine county court judgements. Trading standards had 3 complaints then suddenly it was six. Citizens advice are absolutely useless along with trading standards. See today’s WhICH report, unable to post link here