Vitor Marques
Awesome cashback service!
Quidco has been so far the first and only cashback service I have used and couldn't be happier!
Payouts are faster than the estimated date and tracking has been flawless so far. Both mobile app and website are easy to use and their costumer service has been helpful the few times I have used.
It is definitely worth the sign-up!
A once fine airline...
A fine airline if you don't mind them being late pretty much all the time. LIS airport is a huge bottleneck to their operations.
Their onboard service has deteriorated over the years due to their need to better compete with their LCC competitors.
Once on a red-eye from Lisbon to Stockholm Arlanda in economy I asked for a pillow and blanket to better accommodate myself in the seat and was told they had already run out of those. Later when I went to the toilets in the rear section I saw a flight attendant comfortably sleeping using guess what? a pillow and a blanket. Makes me wonder if the passengers' comfort is at their best interest. I guess not.
TAP mileage programme is a joke too. No use in signing-up for it. They do however offer cheap-ish one way fares across the Atlantic.
A good remittance service
Xendpay is a fine way to send money overseas. The whole process was quite fast and efficient and on top of it I still managed to get a cash bonus due to their referral programme.
They should provide an Android app as well. Somehow there's only an iOS one.
Thank you for your review!
At Xendpay we strive to ensure our clients receive a great service and are constantly improving our services in order to make transfers are as easy as possible to make!
Unfortunately we do not have any plans to introduce an android app for the foreseeable future.
Kind regards,
Xendpay
Disgusting!
I had never heard of Bonimo up until the moment I received an email from them in my spam box. It came to me as if I tried to sign-up to their services using my email address, which I had not. A few days l received a new email stating that my account was up and running!
What a joke! How come a company allows for anyone to use another person's email address to sign-up without any kind of verification! I immediately sent them an email and the following day only got the following answer: "Your account has been successfully blocked."
I'd steer very far away from Binomo and wouldn't trust them with my money! What a joke of a service!
Great booking option!
Easily one of the best online website to look for your next accommodation. Used it to book an hotel a few days ago and had a seamless experience. Now looking forward to receive the equivalent of €45 in Bitcoin as one of its perks for first time users.
So far the only downsides to it are not having a mobile app and the room descriptions being not accurate as its competitors (such as Booking.com). However one should not definitely overlook Travala as they might offer cheaper fares (which was my case!).
SLOW Costumer Service
Azimo provides a somewhat reliable way to transfer money. It seems to be fast and seamless the few times I have tried to use it. Yet it takes way too long to verify your personal ID and their costumer service is totally unreliable. Given the amount of competitors, it never hurts to see what others are offering!
At last, you can also take advantage of their referral programme. If you send at least €100 internationally you can get €10 off.
FREE €10: VITORM10
Thank you for completing your review with new information. We're glad that you found our service quite reliable.
We're less, glad, though, that you found our customer service not quite so reliable. We'd really like to understand why, as the quality of our customer service is very important to us. That's why so we'd ask if you would be so kind as to provide us with more details of what made you think this way as a response to this message. You will receive it as an email in your inbox and you can respond by email as well.
We're slightly surprised that you mentioned a document request as there has been none for your transfers. When they do occur, our team endeavours to check the documents as soon as possible.
We'll truly appreciate your response.
Thank you once again for your time and for trying Azimo!
Have a great evening and the rest of the week.
Kind regards,
Justyna from Azimo Customer Support
Overpromises and underdelivers
The premise sounds good: helping you with your savings. However upon using Oval for a few days, things don't look so bright. The mobile app is incredibly confusing from a UX and UI standpoint, slow, cumbersome and doesn't give users better control over the deposits and withdrawals, forcing us to wait, on a weekly basis, for the direct debits to happen. Moreover, their costumer service is very inefficient and takes a very long time to reply.
At last, their referral bonus programme is a bit of a chore: they announce that "the bonus will be credited after at least 6 successful automatic transfers." yet one must do an automatic transfer every week for 6 weeks at least to get such a meagre bonus!
Overall a big disappointment.
we're very sorry to read these words. We work very hard to make our app better and better, everyday.
Our users have total control over their savings, you can modify the sum of the weekly saving during the week, from Monday to Sunday. Once the savings reaches the balance, you can withdraw in every moment, if you need to.
We give a bonus to incentivize saving and to put our users on the right track from the start.
Our customer service replies to every message in a few hours and we're happy to help you if you need assistance! Write us at support@ovalmoney.com, we'll be glad to help you.
Cryptocurrency appetizer
Change offers a streamlined approach for those who join the crypto-currency bandwagon. It's an easy to use application which offers a few commission-free transactions per month. On top of that I have been able to take advantage of their referral program and have made a few extra bucks with friends and family alike.
However one big downside to Change is their costumer service: they take a really long time to reply (sometimes more than 1 working day) and their sign-up process can be a bit cumbersome. Also, money transfers to Change have become rather difficult: services such as Revolut, Monese, TransferWise have blocked them.
I would say that overall it is not targeted at heavy users. For those I believe there are better services out there.
Thanks for your valuable feedback. We can see the honesty in it.
Our customer support team is currently a two-man operation and we're doing our best to grow.
You can now send to us with Revolut (they resolved their issue internally), TransferWise will soon be accepted (they have not banned us, but this is our partner bank's issue) and Monese has always restricted you from paying to any cryptocurrency platform, period.
We hope you continue to find some value in our services. We certainly look forward to growing with you.
Really awful mobility company!
Despite offering quite fast and light scooters, which are of my preference, everything else Hive offers is a resounding NO.
The scooters offered usually show clear signs of wear and tear and more often that not they simply don't work. Surprisingly, there is no way to report scooter damage in the app via a button or dedicated interface - you need to send them an email. Users should also be able to activate an alarm in order to easily find a scooter in a crowded area, because it happens that the app shows several scooters around a certain area and IRL there is no sign of them!
Their app is very poorly built, takes too long to load and has a few typos (I have alerted them a few months ago and so far they took no action to correct such a small thing).
No app chat support or telephone contact. You either send them an email or chat via Facebook and both do take a rather long time to get a reply.
At last but no least, a few months ago Hive greatly reduced the usage area, making it seriously less competitive comparing to other mobility offers.
If things go wrong, there's no easy way to talk to this company. AVOID.
A must-have in anyone's wallet!
Revolut is currently the most advanced, reliable and sensible travel card one can have.
The future lies here... Almost.
The first car-sharing service to arrive in my city offering a wide range of vehicles, including the all-electric BMW i3.
I was able to sign-up for free and have been using it every now and then (basically whenever they offered free minutes) without any hiccups.
However, they have recently introduced restrictions in certain areas of the city where one can no longer park the car there without a compulsory fee of €2. Changing the rules in the "middle of the game" doesn't sound really that nice. On top of that, such alteration was only disclosed in an email with plenty of other less relevant information, leading to many less cautious users to be unaware of it when they use the DriveNow services within the city boundaries. It should have also been displayed within the app or as a smartphone notification!
Take the plunge and sign-up!
I stumbled upon Curve while browsing the internet.
The £5 bonus enticed me to sign-up. The process was smooth and soon enough I had the Curve card in my hand. I added some of my cards (local bank, fintech apps, etc.) onto the app and in a few days I flew to Hamburg for holidays. I tried to use my regular travel-card, a Visa Revolut, to pay for stuff but it was almost never accepted. That's when the Curve card proved its usefulness: every transaction was successful and underneath I was still using the benefits of my Revolut account! Definitely the best of both worlds.
Moreover, the few times I needed to resort to Curve's costumer service, they provided to be reliable albeit a tad too slow to reply. As a costumer I would like to have the option to use a built-in chat in order to solve things quicker!
The mobile app, despite its usefulness, could be less cluttered and nicer looking (some cards don't have their own graphic image!).
Overall a must-have if you travel and are keen on having an elegant card.
Use my code to get the £5 bonus: PN277BAD
Terrible! Costumer service is nonexistent!
When Taxify (recently rebranded as Bolt) landed in Lisbon I decided to give it a try. After all, competition is always good and the service provided was cheaper than their counterparts. However they really lag behind in terms of costumer service. It's basically non-existent and requires multiple tries before anyone replies. Moreover, if one wishes to delete their account and get all the data deleted, it's basically impossible. What a shameful company! Better stick with their competitors.
Youthful choice
Despite having dubious branding it has been my mobile telecommunications provider for a while now. It has competitive offerings especially on internet data with unlimited usage on select apps. Their customer support is also good!
However their cell coverage is not great when comparing with its competitors (mainly Vodafone) and it is especially noticeable outside urban areas.
There are far better options!
Caixa Geral de Depósitos, the Portuguese state bank, is the ubiquitous option for many. Regarded as a solid and future-proof, I think it is far from being a good option if you want a no-frills and free banking service. The epitome of greediness (and complete ) came when they introduced transfer fees on their homebanking service! In order to avoid those one has to resort to using an ATM, which completely defeats the purpose of using the web services. The mobile app and website are also quite underwhelming and not very user-friendly.
Avoid this bank!
Be aware of the fine print!
I've already used Ryanair Car Rentals a few times and the process has always been seamless. Even when I came across a better deal after having already rented a vehicle, I was able change it free of charge (and get reimbursed the difference!). If you read all the details and rental companies' fine print, there's little chance that things can go wrong.
However I must say that once we came across a situation that ended up costing me extra! At the time of the booking I was aware that I needed €1200 on my credit card to cover the security deposit. Despite its steep value, I had €1250 in order to comply with the policy.
At the car-rental desk I was informed that on top of this €1200 I had to include a "fuel-tax" of a bit more than €100 which, of course, was above the credit card total (€1250), hence being forced to take the €65,26 of insurance! If I knew beforehand of such mandatory tax (which I never came across before) I would have taken the necessary precautions in order to cover it. It was a really shady and unfair practice.
After my trip I was determined to have the insurance reimbursed and contacted Ryanair's costumer service. Soon I got a response: I was only entitled to a €20 voucher to spend upon another rental. Despite my persistent efforts to get the €65, I didn't manage to get it.
When in doubt make sure to call the rental company in order to clarify everything!
The most sensible option!
My go-to service whenever I want to book any kind of accommodation. It's always been very reliable and straightforward. Its interface is clear and easy-to-use and the single most important thing: from my searches it is the website that shows the cheapest options all the time!
If one is always aware of the accommodations' rules and complies with it, things go always smoothly. However, their costumer service is very subpar... I have sent them a few messages to their social media profiles and never got anything more than an automated bot response!
Moreover, one can get €15 on their credit card for referring friends to use Booking.com!
One of the most reasonable banking options in Portugal!
Without much consideration, I became an ActivoBank costumer a few years ago. It grew on me to become my go-to banking service in Portugal. First of all, it is one of the few banks that offers an account + debit card completely for free without any kinds of fees, forever. Their costumer service is also reliable and offered the necessary expertise the few times I had to use it.
Despite only having a handful of branches in the major cities, it is possible to use Millennium's subsidiaries to do all kinds of tasks on their proprietary ATMs, such as deposits and so on.
All things considered, it is hard to beat ActivoBank's offers if you live in Portugal.
At your service...
In a perfect world, services like AirHelp shouldn't be needed. Under the EC261/2004 of the European Union, airlines are obliged to compensate passengers under certain situations (delays, cancellations, etc.).
Missing my connection in Stockholm, hence arriving home 3+ hours later than the scheduled arrival, gave me the opportunity me to file a claim. At first I tried to do it directly with LOT Polish Airlines but that route provided unsuccessful. So I resorted to AirHelp, which handled the task quite well and it provided fruitful: received €300 (€400 - €100 in fees).
If you want to go hassle free, AirHelp is a solid option!
When things go south... don't fly LOT!
A have flown LOT a few times already. Pretty uneventful intra-European flights up until one missed connection last September due to the late departure of LOT flight (on behalf of Nordica) from Tallinn to Stockholm which led me to lose the flight bound to Lisbon.
Upon landing at Stockholm I made my way to the SAS Helpdesk in order to understand what options I had to make it home. Both SAS and LOT are Star Alliance members and yet the cooperation between both is nonexistent. Due to the lack of a LOT physical office of the grounds of Stockholm Airport, at the helpdesk I was given a number that I was supposed to call. I demanded to use their local landline (as I was not going to incur in any fees making the call to Poland!) and was on hold for more than 40 MINUTES! No one from LOT Polish Airlines Costumer Service picked up the call despite my many attempts.
Taking compassion upon my failed efforts, the agent at SAS took the liberty to reroute me to Lisbon via Brussels. Yet the company at fault, LOT, couldn't care less about leaving my stranded at the airport due to their late arrival and fail to meet their obligations as to find me another flight to my destination!
Worst experience ever! Won't fly this airline again, unless strictly necessary!