Brian

They took over Courage and Youngs beers - which were very well known and liked beers in London and the South East - and then stopped selling them in the area replacing them with inferior beers; mainly Hobgoblin which is from, I think, the Midlands. I've not been able to find Courage beers for several years and Youngs beers for probably 2 or 3 years I now check if a beer is from Carlsberg Marstons and if it is refuse to buy it. These wicked capitalists are decreasing choice massively instead of increasing it but then what else would you expect from wicked capitalists!?

I've only found out today that I cannot submit a review of a product I purchased from Argos. On their review site. I bought a "Bush Personal FM Radio" from them on 18th May 2023 for £9.99 on 18th May 2023 at 11.15 hours and paid cash for it. I selected the radio they had to sell fairly easily and it did not take more than 2 or 3 minutes for the staff to get the item for me. However, the radio is very poor (batteries get used up very quickly; you can't hear the radio using earphones when walking and cars go by; the time and presets are lost when the batteries die; the AM reception does not pick up any stations; the headphones socket is in my opinion in the wrong place - at the side of the radio rather than on top; it does fit in a shirt pocket though and is light) but the Argos site has lots of reviews saying it is very good and as far as I can tell so far, the Argos website does not have a way for me to submit a review of the radio. I have also read comments about Argos product reviews on the Money Saving Expert website that Argos only allows good reviews of what it sells. I would not now trust any product reviews on the Argos website at all.

Quite annoying trying to enter the Peak Save prize draw. When I was already in my account to enter the draw it asked me to find my account number and as they don't send actual letters it was a bother to find. Also, when I wanted to put my landline in the phone number box I got the message "number doesn't look right" and the form would not accept my correct phone number!. Actually the whole website is irritating and tells you to sign in to an online account when I had signed in as far as I know to my British Gas online account. Also, the website keeps logging me out, requiring me to repeatedly re-enter my account details and password to access it. Then I have a smart meter which should send readings every half hour to British Gas but when I looked the last readings were from 3 weeks ago and I could not find out how to make sure my meter readings were being sent as often as possible.

I've just seen the reply from British Gas but I'm not on Facebook, Instagram or X and don't want to be so I won't be able to use the option they offered to contact British Gas on those websites.

They used to offer good value for money on just about everything when Ronnie Gottschlits was Chief Executive (about four years ago) but then Lidl got rid of him and the store has been getting worse just about every time I go back there since then. Many products that were good value have been removed from sale and have been replaced with much more expensive well known brand name products (or are just no longer available) and they have reduced the quality and or value for money of many things they sell e.g. fizzy orange cans Lidl own brand tastes a lot worse than it used to as, I think, they have stopped putting orange juice in it. It seems to me that Lidl saw that Tesco, Sainsbury's and other large supermarkets did not feel the need to compete with them so Lidl has pushed almost but not all of their prices up to similar levels ,or in some cases higher levels, than the other major supermarkets. Also, very often when I visit my local Sevenoaks branch, I find empty shelves and usually quite a few products for which there are no price labels. I have lost just about all the goodwill I used to have for Lidl and would not be at all sad if they withdrew from this country and went back to Germany even if some of their products are cheaper than Tesco's and Sainsbury's who are also, literally, rip off merchants.

Lidl has been getting worse for about the last two years every time I visit them. I feel their slogan "Lidl on price"is deceitful as they are trying to pretend all their prices are all little when they are not! Of course, their prices are "Lidl" as that is the name of their store. They offer less and less that is good value. Products that I used to like have disappeared. When they used to offer very good prices on a lot of things they now offer those on only a few things. For instance, 85 pence for a pint of fresh milk is taking the mickey (especially as the price for two pints is £1.15 & 4 pints is £1.45) - it was only 50 pence two or three months ago. Their prices have also gone up by far more than inflation in the last two or three month on just about everything else too. Also, the quality of a lot of things they sell has deteriorated. Lately many of the shelves are bare when I visit my local store; they don't seem to be able to get the staff to stock the shelves. I think the beers they sell is a good example of how Lidl behave because they have lots of very expensive beers I've never heard of rather than ones that have been around for years that I know and like.