Ryanair

Never again.

Treated like cattle- or perhaps lambs to the slaughter would be closer.

This is the airline, remember, who suggested charging for the toilet, or removing seats and having passengers stand up!

Jean-Yves Tillier found this review useful

Bmibaby

Best of the budget airlines.

Damning with faint praise, perhaps. But less rubbish than the others.

Dialaphone

Good "headline" prices, but....

... a lot of the cheap offers are hedged around with odd qualifiers- you have to send in copies of some of your invoices for a rebate, usually within a very tight time-window. They're obviously hoping you'll forget and won't qualify for the discount.

Rok Memory Limited

Quick, cheap, don't hassle you.

The right stuff, at the right prices, quickly- and they don't bombard you with excessive emails.

Dabs

Improving.

Early experiences were not so good- if you had a problem, it was hard to get to talk to an actual human, and the "e-ticket" system seemed to be very delay-prone.

Not used for a while, but the experience was decidedly better, and when I had an issue with a purchase it was sorted without quibble.

Gear4music.com

Only used once- pretty good.

The only problem I had was getting them to stop emailing me, when I had no further interest (I used the site to buy a gift for a relative- personally, I can't carry a tune in a bucket).

Laithwaites

Lovely people!

Informed, friendly, helpful, flexible, and not at all pushy.

All telesales people should study at Laithwaites for 6 months.

Misco

Pretty damn good. Not perfect, but close.

Good products, good prices, good service. Could improve their response time a little to queries.

Virgin

Mostly OK, until things go wrong.

I use Virgin Trains, mainly. OK until there is a problem, then the whole organisation seems to go into headless chicken mode. One particular cancellation left me hopping all sorts of random trains, and it took me 4.5 hours to get to London (normally 90-odd minutes). But the worst part was the lack of information- no-one seemed to know what was happening.

The First Class lounge is nice.

thetrainline.com

The most irritating ad in TV history....

... *And* they charge a booking fee, which Virgin don't. That's all you need, really.

On top of that, their website seems to positively relish thwarting your wishes- I mainly didn't get the seat I wanted (aisle seat), unless I "gamed" the system by adding tickets to my basket until it gave me an aisle seat and then deleting the unwanted ones.

I *have* actually written to them, telling them that I won't ever use them again because their TV ads are so bad.

Talktalk

Hated every minute.

We had their phone service. My partner needed ADSL to allow remote working, so we enquired about their advertised "broadband for £6" or something like that. We were told it didn't apply to us, it would be £20-odd (I can't remember the exact amounts).

Then a letter arrived, welcoming us to TalkTalk broadband! The person we'd spoken to, to whom we had *firmly* said "no thanks", had signed us up. We cancelled this, of course. Then, a short while later, we got another welcome letter- we'd been signed up again!

As soon as we were out of contract, we cancelled their service and put them on our "do not use, ever" list.

Iggy Ferrier found this review useful

Vodafone

No signal at all at my house or for 1/2 mile around....

..unless you climb a tree.

Easyjet

"Like flying would be if it were illegal".

Ed Byrne said that about Ryanair, but it's equally applicable.

I wanted to go to Amsterdam on business. The headline price looked very attractive- but *everything* costs extra- by the time I'd totted it up, it was only £1 dearer to go with Air France/KLM, a much more pleasant experience.

Then I remembered the *last* time I flew Easyjet- everything late, no information no apologies. So I emptied my "basket" and closed the site, and went with AF/KLM.

Garden4less

Problem-free shopping experience.

Cheaper than Amazon, brisk service and free shipping. What's not to like?

Buyitdirect

Excellent after-sales service

Bought an HP laptop which was advertised as having a LightScribe DVD device. It didn't. LaptopsDirect sent me an external LightScribe DVD drive to make up for the mistake. Can't fault that.