Terence Bates

It is a shame 1 star is the lowest.

So here is the story, we are a business employing 40 people. We turn over £3million in the hospitality industry. We have zero borrowings and have never been overdrawn or seen a bounced/declined payment and have been in business for close to 12 years. At times we have had substantial sums in our account. It is a pristine account our credit rating is very good.

So we do a transaction with an Indian company for an amount of £2300 to purchase goods for our retail store. We know this company as we met them at a trade show and checked them out, they are bonafide. We also import from other Indian companies and have never had a 'security' issue, we are not idiots.

Santander in their wisdom when they see this Indian transaction block our account.

I would point out this is not the first time they have blocked us out of our bank account.

Now when I say blocked out, this means no access to pay suppliers bills or staff their wages. These same staff will have bills to pay like rent/mortgages/food.

Today we have spent close to 6 hours on the phone to them, even to the point of waiting in a hospital car park where one of the directors was hanging on to them prior to a hospital appointment.

Santander now tells us it will take 48 hours to unlock the account. WTF!

This bank frankly should be closed down or in the very least barred from operating business accounts.

Our account is healthy with a nice balance close to 6 figures. Tomorrow we will seek a new banker, we are utterly sick of their incompetence. And if our account is not unlocked tomorrow we will look at a legal recourse and at the same time report them to the banking ombudsman . They are truly shocking. I am not given to leaving critical reviews like this unless something serious has happened. Every word above is the truth.

My advice to anyone looking for business banking is to take a wide berth from this bunch of cowboys.

As an update. Their issue appears to be 'security concerns' . Now whilst I understand bank fraud, phishing etc is a massive problem out there, this begs the question that their system is not on top of security. We spoke to at least 3 different people as we juggled through hanging on... I mean 6 hours what on earth is going on? Frustratingly the calls drop out and you end up on a 'repeat process' but with a different person. This bank does not appoint a designated 'account manager' , in short they are stuck in the past and by that I mean a 20 year old system as opposed to 40 years old. I have run businesses for over 40 years and remember traditional banking where you developed a relationship with a real time bank manager. Looking at more modern set ups for a ew baking solution now.

Looking at the number of critical reviews it seems to back up my experience.

Santander need to get their act together or they may find themselves in a struggling situation in years to come.

We really do not need this stress.

When I look at internet the first thing I look at is the equipment. We took on Hyperoptic as a solution for our cafe.
We were promised high speeds and good bandwidth. That has never happened.

We raised a complaint several times on this... no response.

The equipment/router operating their super fast broadband is comically cheap standard. I would value this at £20 worth.

I am not an idiot and own a tech company. Now we are having to threaten legal action to get this removed. They have broken the contract as there is no service and does not meet their advertised criteria.

Broadband is a problem . Fortunately we kept with Zen who we have had a positive experience with for close to 20 years.

I have sent a last email offering them the chance to call and discuss. Will report back on the outcome

Terence Bates
Tram Store/Clapton Country Club London

Thousands of stories out there on these crooks. I had three experiences with them. Long stories, one booking by me where I paid for a hotel in France, then turned up at the hotel in France, no record of the booking had to pay hotel again. Booking.com kept my original payment, no refund. Then my son used my card to book a hotel in India to meet me where we were staying. , one of their top hotels - the Taj, I had gone on a luxury holiday after going through 6 months or cancer hell and treatments. Same problem/same story, no record of booking and I had to pay hotel direct again, our original card payment processed by booking.con and KEPT.. they refused a refund and our card co/bank refused to process a refund. Then recently my other son used our card in America for car hire in Atlanta, we turned up at the car hire company to collect car, no booking and no cars available. no response from booking.con, no refund. This time we fought them. The advantage we had was leverage through our card company. So far they have refunded us but with the proviso that if booking.com refute this they may have to charge us. The problem with these stories stems from the fact that the likes of big tech companies of Booking.com ilk get away with because they hide away globally and make themselves as uncontactable as possible. How do you hold a huge conglomerate to account.. These are akin to organised crime by billionaire investors, there is little to no consumer protection. Governments need to wake up these scams and protect the public. WARN EVERYONE ABOUT THESE CROOKS, for every ten transactions you will see at least one rip off. They need closing down. Consumers all around the world are being stolen from (Yes it is theft), they are raking in millions and millions, without this they would be bust. They are not alone, there are many big tech companies doing the same. All of what I have written is true. I run my own business in London and employ 40 people. I am not an idiot that they can rip off. There really needs to be a class action against these crooks.

Thousands of stories out there on these crooks. I had three experiences with them. Long stories, one booking by me where I paid for a hotel in France, then turned up at the hotel in France, no record of the booking had to pay hotel again. Booking.com kept my original payment, no refund. Then my son used my card to book a hotel in India to meet me where we were staying. , one of their top hotels - the Taj, I had gone on a luxury holiday after going through 6 months or cancer hell and treatments. Same problem/same story, no record of booking and I had to pay hotel direct again, our original card payment processed by booking.con and KEPT.. they refused a refund and our card co/bank refused to process a refund. Then recently my other son used our card in America for car hire in Atlanta, we turned up at the car hire company to collect car, no booking and no cars available. no response from booking.con, no refund. This time we fought them. The advantage we had was leverage through our card company. So far they have refunded us but with the proviso that if booking.com refute this they may have to charge us. The problem with these stories stems from the fact that the likes of big tech companies of Booking.com ilk get away with because they hide away globally and make themselves as uncontactable as possible. How do you hold a huge conglomerate to account.. These are akin to organised crime by billionaire investors, there is little to no consumer protection. Governments need to wake up these scams and protect the public. WARN EVERYONE ABOUT THESE CROOKS, for every ten transactions you will see at least one rip off. They need closing down. Consumers all around the world are being stolen from (Yes it is theft), they are raking in millions and millions, without this they would be bust. They are not alone, there are many big tech companies doing the same. All of what I have written is true. I run my own business in London and employ 40 people. I am not an idiot that they can rip off. There really needs to be a class action against these crooks.

Can’t give a minus 100 but would if I could

Three times now they have screwed up and kept the money

First time was with a French Hotel and the owner did not speak English . We had booked through booking.com he could not find the booking and we had to pay again. Raised an issue with booking.com and radio silence we accepted maybe it was a misunderstanding with hotel. Later found out it was not.

Second time my son booked the Taj Palace hotel in Mumbai to come stay with us . Paid through booking.com same story came back from the hotel no booking no payment via their platform.

Finally my other son organised car hire in November when we were in the states. This all unbeknown to me through booking.com platform. We get to the car hire place no booking and there were no cars available. So we went elsewhere . Get back to find a £180 charged through our credit card

Again radio silence from this mob and perhaps mob is the right word. My conclusions from both my experience and others (check the internet) is that they are in trouble and are likely to go bust.

I can prove all of the above. I have my card company looking into it. I have told my card company to sort out it I will kick them into touch and considering 900k per annum
goes through this card they stand to lose a lucrative customer.

Despicable company do not book anything with them

Big Tech are fleecing millions of people all over the world and are virtually untouchable. Booking.com operate knowing this

This company operate under many different names and are fleecing ,millions through Facebook ads. They do it in small amounts. I for example lost 9.99, They are using AI and glossy appealing design led items at very low prices to lure people in. You are unlikely to receive any goods or refund, they have automated responses to drag this out in the hope you simply go away. Facebook needs to be held accountable for this. I as a matter of principle will not buy a single thing advertised on Facebook, especially sponsored pages. This is the world we live in. These operators are all over the world including India, Russia and China, so in essence they scam with impunity.

scam and fraud merchants, you will not get your goods, there are simply offering attractive goods at low prices and they do not exist. They will soon change name, go bust and et up again, phoenix scam operators. Avoid

I am leaving this review on how they handle challenges to toxic 'bad' reviews on small businesses. They rejected our well measured and detailed response towards someone who clearly had a vendetta against our business. Not to trip advisor: We are a business that will never subscribe to advertising with you due to how you handle your review system. Your loss, not ours.

Ok so here I am in Limbo land, no communication no information on when our order (A fridge/freezer) is going to be received, no tracking....nothing, zilch. No reply email address, a phone number that does not work and then an onerous clause in their contract on cancelling an order stating

'If your order has already been prepared, it is not possible to cancel it. Once you have received the package, you can return one or .

'Prepared' What does that mean it is an absolutely ambigiuous statement.

We ordered this fridge to go into one of our rental properties where the tenant moves in on Tuesday. The lead time on this was quoted as 4/5 days. It was ordered 8 days ago.

So now is squeaky bum time and we have to make the decision to get another fridge in, which we are now processing.

The silly thing from their perspective is we are involved with a block of 179 apartments. they really are shooting themselves in the foot.

I've been in business over 40 years and customer service has fallen by the wayside largely thanks to the switch to online, making everything impersonal and little real contact, with companies hiding behind T&C's and offshore locations. Fortunately we paid for this with our credit card, we will be covered and protected due the turnover and business we give to our merchant services.

Create really need to get their act together and deal with this side of the business in a better fashion.

See their response below, what a load of nonsense in my world if you state 4/5 days delivery then that is what it is. They have this term 'prepared', it is a get out ambiguous statement designed to fob the customer off and mislead, I cannot see it any other way. Disingenuous.

WITHIN THE LAST THREE MONTHS WE HAVE HAD TWO NON DELIVERIES TO A TOLAT VALUE OF £300. THE SUPPLIERS PROVIDE TRACKING, WITH NO PHOTOS AS PROOF OF DELIVERY (WHAT COULD BE SIMPLER?) IN THE LAST TEN YEARS WE AS A BUSINESS HAVE MADE AROUND £8-£10 MILLION OF PURCHASES. NON DELIVERY IS SO RARE AND NONE OF THE SUPPLIERS HAVE TREATED US SO ABYSMALLY AS EBAY HAVE. I DON'T CARE FOR THE MONEY IT IS THE PRINCIPLE, THERE WAS A TIME EBAY TOOK A MORE BALANCED VIEW, BUT THEY DO NOT WANT TO BACK CONSUMERS UP WHEN THIS HAPPENS. I AM NOW LOOKING AT WAYS TO GET THIS MONEY BACK. CANCELLING OUR ACCOUNT AND WILL LOOK AT MORE ETHICAL WAYS OF DOING BUSINESS WITH SUPPLIERS

Will never book through this Platform again. I consider them crooks. Two separate bookings were made through them (1 in France and 1 in India) and we paid through booking.com. We then turn up at hotels and both hotels insist that there is either no booking with them and/or room has not been paid for, so we have to pay the hotels direct.

Check our bank account and Booking.com has taken payment. Turn up at hotels and either cannot find booking or say it hasn't been paid

One of these hotels was the Taj Mahal in Mumbai, not exactly a small Hotel.

Of course then follows the Pandemic and complete block out. We are still owed somewhere in the region of £1500 from almost 5 years ago.

At the time I was just recovering from cancer and did not have the energy to pursue them.

Such is my disdain for internet booking I always try to book direct on everything. These platforms are middle men and consumers have little to no protection as very often they are a global organisation and UK consumer laws do not apply.

After 5 years we have just booked our first Holiday taking a month out. Every single flight and hotel has been booked direct with the businesses involved, not one middle man platform is getting their hands on my money.

I think everyone needs to wake up to the exploitation of these platforms it is everywhere and has driven prices upwards often fleecing consumers.

10 stars for Steve and this mob. Too often reviews go the other way. We bought a brand new toilet that had defective parts. We had to finish this installation off before tenant returned from vacation, the supplier was useless and created a massive problem for us.. These guys saved the day with replacement fill valve sent out in 24 hours. Fantastic service they deserve their high rating on here... well done guys!

We are a property and hospitality company so have lots of maintenance works to do. We recently purchased a VItra wall hung toilet kit from this company via ebay.

The kit is defective in two areas: 1) The toilet leaks from the soil connection/outlet section, there is a small crack in this toilet that in our view was a manufacture defect. The fill valve does not operate and enables the cistern to overfill. This was an urgent job and they have been unhelpful in resolving this asking for several videos/images. We sent the images and had to uninstall the toilet and have now arranged for a new one to be delivered. The stress they have caused is unreal. This job was planned for installation whilst tenants were away. They return on Thursday, we have 24 hours to install this. What is incredible to think is that we sit on the board of a collective of 188 apartments plus several other extensive properties in London . We have a budget over the next 3 years of almost £5 million for maintenance works. This will include bathrooms etc, so not very smart from their perspective.

Will add looking at the other reviews, we are not alone.

Currently dealing with a third party supplier (Trade taps - Ebay) on a Vitra wall hung toilet system we bought .

This has now been installed on a project that we have to get completed by Thursday. The fill valve is defective (It does not cut off leaving water to overfill and leak onto the floor) and there is a small crack within the toilet soil pipe that looks like a manufacturers defect, that shows a very small leak. Have tried getting sense from the third party supplie, but we are being fobbed offr. We also tried to get a replacement fill valve (Vitra Fill Valve 426185YP) via two sources on the internet and were told none would be available until November. What are they supposed to do poo in a bucket? It seems quite incredible that a brand like Vitra operate this way. Exploring both alternatives and ways of getting both our money back and our costs of double installing a toilet.

I went down the route of considering operating through them Oh boy did they make it difficult to trade, in the end we rejected it, now they bombard me with Spam email despite us 'unsubscribing' around a dozen times.

This is a repeat of Uber/deliveroo/Airbnb/Open Table etc etc.. When are small businesses/operators going to learn!

These big tech companies are out to maximise their revenue for essentially doing not a lot and will send small businesses under.

Small businesses I calculate lose up to 50% of their revenue through VAT, App-tech platform charges and Merchant processing charges.

The only way you can accommodate this is to whack it onto your prices and the general public do not have endless wads of money to spend and it is getting g tougher - globally.

If you operate through these Apps/platforms, this will come and bite you on the rear at some point.

The revenue they generate largely goes out of the UK, successive governments have not addressed this and that means we pay more in local taxation to accommodate their tax swerves.

Wake up everyone!

THEY ARE AN ABSOLUTE SCAM. They lure you in at a cheap offer at 5.95 to do a car check. You then get told to tick their terms and conditions, which includes you signing up at 39.95 per month service.

Absolute con merchants as can be seen by the reviews. Quite why the UK government have not got to grips with the tech industry on this level I do not know.

They are based in Ireland, so probably feel untouchable.

They are not alone in this practice. It needs to be stopped. I am looking at this from a legal standpoint and will sue them even if it costs me more money.

How public is being ripped off by a mafia like organisation. Educate everyone you know.

We have now changed our debit card that they used for this transaction.

UPDATE:

They issue the following (possibly AI generated ?) response below to anyone that gives them a poor review as can seen elsewhere. They never ever do the right thing, it is an unethical money making scheme. If these reviews begin to affect their operation they will probably operate under a new domain name. That's what these organisations do. The public need to wake up to these platforms and kick them into touch on every level.

The Internet is filled with the most unethical traders going. I am reducing my activity on the web to around 50% of what I currently do. If we all started doing this, the government and the Tech industry might attempt to get its house in order including the paying of taxes which many of these off UK companies DO NOT pay into.

should really have zero for stealing images of our business and staff with zero permission, unreal that they can then sell images of our store front and interiors for up to £40.00 which could in turn encourage fraud or imposters

Looking into the legality of this, and if they have broken any laws civil or otherwise, we will take action.

Anyone interested and who feels the same feel free to message me.

As everyone has said this company part of the Affinion Group who were ordered to repay millions in America after misleading consumers are now doing the same here. They need to be stopped £15 per month multiplied by one million = 200 million or £1 billion over 5 years, this is the extent of their operation. More often than not you do not know you are subscribed to them until months later (in my case 2 years) . They operate behind a pseudonym of 'Complete Savings' giving the impression it is a bank savings scheme and therefore not challenged (As many here testify to. They need to be stopped sued and money recovered in a class action as they were in America.

In 2013, Affinion settled allegations with 47 states in America that its companies misled consumers regarding membership in discount clubs. A $19 million fund was instituted to refund customers who had been subject to unauthorized charge. They are getting away with this across the globe.

Now they are trying to get my review taken down as I have gone into more detail than most.

As my namesake Alan Bates showed with the post Office, you need to be careful who you rip off...

Where do I start. I have been a host for close to 12 years now and have watched Airbnb go down the toilet increasingly in recent years turning the screw on both hosts and guests. I am about to delist all 3 of our listings, ironically though not because of hosting issues but because of a booking I made in error. On all of our listings we have a fair cancellation policy as we do within our very successful hospitality business. However on making a booking in Prague I missed the bit about climbing several flights of stairs (. I am still recovering from cancer and my wife is in an even worse situation having just spent 3 weeks in hospital. We were looking at this escape to bring some light to what has been a pretty miserable time. I spotted the stairs issues within minutes and straightaway sought to cancel, only to find a 'no refund policy' on the part of the host. Now you may think tough luck. Airbnb ridiculously blamed it on the host without taking any responsibility for allowing this policy to exist. When you look at Airbnb's filters there is no part to filter properties without a lift or with poor access, and several flights of stairs and being on the top floor and no filter on cancellation policies. You miss all this at your peril. This is not about money, I don't need it, this is about principle and standing up against unfair trading practices. Airbnb took a whole week to get back to me after I rang them within minutes of realising this booking is not possible. The hosts agent Klarrin was ambivalent basically saying tough luck. I am now looking at the legal aspect of this and will if need be report back. So for anyone reading this, beware there are hosts who will impose unreasonable terms and there is Airbnb there to facilitate this as a rip off. I will never book with Airbnb again personally or through our business nor will my family. There are now other platforms and sources to book through. They are in danger of becoming a dinosaur.

Oh boy what a mistake this looks like being.
We had a contract for 12 years with Vodafone. Ice continually telephoned us to get us to switch mobile phone service, saying they can save us money from our bills, we looked at this and they bypassed me as the decision maker and talked my young son into signing a contract.. Incredibly the new deal is with... Vodafone. We questioned how they could do this and they mentioned market prices etc etc, a contract for 3 years, it looks like we have been miss sold. Vodafone themselves informed us that it was not possible to migrate from Vodafone to Vodafone, so big question marks hang over this strategy. Reading the bad reviews this looks like long term it could be a big mistake, I looked at all the good reviews and did not refer to the poor reviews. Unbeknown to me my Son signed the contract without checking all the details and running it past the directors -we will check if this is actually valid. New sims were received 3 days ago and my son was told the new service would go live on Friday. What they did not explain to him was how this could be any time Friday, from my experience in life Friday could turn into Monday which in essence could cost us 100k in lost business. So far all Friday morning we have not being able to take or receive any business calls which in essence means lost business and quite considerable business at that. In dealing with their customer service there was utter ambivalence at best. I also pointed out the one of the directors (my wife) is awaiting calls from the hospital at any moment regarding a kidney transplant... yes that's right that customer could not give a damn even in these circumstances. I also had the police trying to contact us through all our phones, in connection with a burglary at our premises, they sent an email saying they could not contact us and needed to speak to us urgently. We are not a small business/Operation and now find ourselves with no phone and talking to our solicitors. It takes a lot to get me riled and as others have found I am a beast to deal with in these situations.

Update:

1. You gave no warning of having no service. As a business you should know this is crucial to all businesses, how could you fail to mention this? l. This did not make sense and at no time during negotiations with me or my accountant was loss of service mentioned. Considering service was staying with Vodafone on the same numbers, this should have been seamless.
2. YOU DID NOT CALL BACK AND LEAVE A VOICEMAIL -There are no voicemails on any of our phones and if there were we would not have been able to retrieve them. What a joke thing to say, there was no service due to the 'switch over' so how could you leave. a voicemail?,You could not get through because our phones were not connected. Incredible thing to put out there for the public to see
3. What ICE have failed to deliver was service. You were all over this on getting the deal but provided little support once a deal was you felt concluded.
4. What we would like explained is how you managed to switch from Vodafone to Vodafone especially as Vodafone said this could not be done?

Even now over a week later not one customer representative has called up to offer an apology or explanation.

I judge all businesses on how they deal with mistakes. We all make mistakes, they are there to be learnt from. This would have happened to other businesses you switched for and you would I think had the same response from those businesses left without service, communication is imperative for all businesses. Had we been informed of loss of service measures could have been taken to forward calls elsewhere or we could have made an informed decision not to switch especially had we known there would have been loss of service on all 4/5 of our phones.