Which? Recenzje 704

And I assumed they were trustworthy.
Which Magazine advertise a current subscription rate of £11.99 a month for Full Access. I have been charged £13.99 a month. Why am I paying more that the current rate? An email received today proposes a new charge of £14.99. Why the increase?
I tried to contact Which by phone - 15 minutes and no response. I tried to contact Which by Live Chat - 30 minutes and no response. Why can't I cancel my subscription online ?
The following was their response to a similar complaint from October 2021. They say "soon" but over 3 years has lapsed since this commitment was made. This can only be explained as a deliberate company policy to maximise income.
"It is true that the current forms of cancellation are via email, phonecall, letter or live chat. We'll soon be allowing all members to maintain their subscriptions, with changing their payment details and ceasing their subscriptions online. We're keen to ensure that our website and features are brought up to date as soon as possible."

For an association which is supposed to be championing consumer rights the membership cancellation process is totally unacceptable.
I was not able to cancel online, the website told me that I should do so using live chat or by calling. However the live chat was not working, and I had to queue for more than 20 minutes on the telephone before I spoke to an agent.
Members should be able to cancel online

Terrible customer service!! I haven't been able to change my membership type online for months. "We're upgrading our systems, so you may not see all of your subscriptions here yet." - So time to cancel......if they ever answer their phone line!!? This is bordering on criminal, from a company that reviews other companies.....time for someone to review Which!

Which? are actively promoting a scam DashCam called Dashwiser. They are actively promoting fraud. See Dashwiser trustpilot reviews to understand how bad this business is.

I can only concur with all the previous comments. Just spent 30 minutes on the phone with no answer. Been a member for many years and just want to change my subscription, which (no pun intended) you can't do online, you have to contact them, but they don't answer. Shocked at how poor this so called consumer protector can be at communication. Will cancel my subscription - if I ever get through.

I paid for a digital membership which was easily done but now I want to cancel the only way to do this appears to be to phone a number in the daytime.
I have since had a reply that is a lie. Which did not respond to my email and when I Iog into my account to cancel there is not an option for cancellation instead I am directed to live chat or a telephone number both of which are closed.

For a so called customer champion, Which’s customer service is unbelievably awful.

I took out a digital membership on 16th December. To this day I have not received confirmation of my membership and therefore cannot access my membership. Instead I discovered that the membership I had ordered has been sent to someone else!

I immediately sent a complaint to Which? Apart from an automated reply confirming receipt, I heard nothing from Which? until 24th December, 8 days later (they claim to try and reply by the next working day, though sometimes they take ‘a little longer’.) This long awaited reply was nothing more than a vague one line summary of my complaint. Since then, I have heard absolutely nothing.

So, I have paid for a membership but I have no access to it and my data has been shared with a third party. I am quite simply flabbergasted by this experience of Which?. It is so contrary to the mission of the organisation as a consumer champion. It is the type of behaviour that Which? would slam.

UPDATE
26th January,41 days after my complaint and still no resolution. Still under investigation apparently. Consumer champion? You are having a laugh.

Lost my credit card so cancelled it. Pay which via my card . Because I cancelled my card which cancelled my subscription which I have had for the last 20 years. Won’t let me renew or add my new card details. Have to set up new subscription which does not offer me same plan. This cannot be right. Had some jobs worth who would not transfer me to a supervisor and told I would only get same answer. Buyers beware you are not getting value for money and your consumer rights are vialated buy the company that champions these rights. I am entitled to change my card details without it affecting my subscription. Not only did I have the worry of losing my card I now have to put up with being told I have no rights and basically tough.
Made an official complaint in December and yesterday 18/01/2025 received a reply. This reply did not address any of the issues I made. This company has total disregard for its subscribers anybody reading this and thinking of taking out a subscription please please don’t.
Just read your reply what a load of rubbish. Have contacted your team via email. Will not reinstate my subscription as you no longer do the subscription I had. Will not be treated like an imbecile all you had to do was take my new card details no different to when a new card is issued when your card expires. Your customer service needs updating and are so rude it’s unbelievable.

I have subscribed to Which for many years but will not be renewing this year. The last 2 bestbuy bits of advice have been awful. Zen Internet which has given me nothing but trouble and Polk Speakers which are impossible for everyone I know to get to work properly. Wish I never looked on the site.

Misled me by making it look like they had a page full of recommended TVs, but you had to subscribe to see the details. Subscribed to unlock the page and all the supposed TVs vanished to be replaced with a message saying they didn't recommend getting any TVs in that range.

Unsubscribed, although they made it difficult as they could by hiding the unsubscribe button behind a browser banner. Had to zoom out to be able to find it!

Asked for a refund as their policy says you can get a refund if you unsub with 14 days. Still haven't got a refund weeks later and they're ignoring my emails.

I paid to access the service, I had problems with my password manager and had to reset my password, but I could not. Despite my new password matching their requirements, their website would not accept it, so now I cannot access my account. I had access for 1 day, I've emailed their support 5 times but had no reply at all. I am basically paying for nothing and I can't even cancel. DO NOT SUBSCRIBE THEY WILL JUST TAKE YOUR MONEY AND KEEP BILLING YOU AND NOT REPLY. As for the review I did read on my one day of access, the reviews seem generic and useless articles, I say this because I purchased an item based on their positive review but my experience of the purchased item did not match Which's review so I now question their integrity - the articles seem to be AI generated now. I've tried emailing which AT which.co.uk and complaintsteam AT which.co.uk 5+ times - NO REPLY. Let's see if they reply here.

I am a very long term subscriber to Which. When I joined there were only quarterly subscriptions. The cost has been steadily rising and with the current hike of around 10% I decided to look a bit closer. I found they now use annual subscriptions and charge those subscribing quarterly around a 30% premium. When I contacted them they explained only existing members can be on quarterly subscriptions. So long term quarterly subscribers pay a big premium and much more than new annual subscribers. The advisor I contacted "didn't know" and couldn't find out how long I'd been paying this huge premium. Its the kind of approach that Which would be critical of with other organisations.

I company that you can’t reach and talk to.
I have in offer to extend my membership and all was good till few weeks later nothing happened. They didn’t debit my card for the membership as we agreed and when I try to contact them you can’t fined a way to speak with antibody 40 min on a telephone and nothing.
Joe they cancel my membership and now one even bother to check why the DD didn’t not work and informed me if there is an issues.
They just cancelled my membership.

I don’t think they are worth your money.

I
Which Awards. I raised an issue with Which Awards to car insurers who either refuse to insure or charge extra for older drivers even if they have a clean record and extensive driving experience. Which Consumer Awards did not want to know and dismissed my concerns in a very disparaging and patronising way. It makes me feel like taking all of their recommendations for products with a pinch of salt!

I recently had a frustrating experience with Which.co.uk that made me question their commitment to championing consumer rights. As a consumer organization, I expected them to uphold the values they advocate for, but unfortunately, my experience was quite the opposite.

My subscription was set to automatically renew annually, and my account was debited on 19 November without any prior warning. When I tried to cancel today, I was told it was too late because I had missed the 14-day cooling-off period. I understand the policy, but given that the automatic renewal was done without clear communication, this felt extremely unfair.

I then asked if it would be possible to change my subscription from annual to monthly, so I could terminate it next month if needed, but this request was also refused. The irony here is that Which.co.uk, a supposed advocate for consumer rights, is applying the same practices they often criticise, leaving me feeling frustrated and powerless.

As a long-time supporter of Which.co.uk, I expected better customer service and more consumer-friendly practices. I hope they reconsider their approach to automatic renewals and customer satisfaction in the future.

Update dated 03/02/2025

I confirm that I have received a pro-rated refund, for which I am sincerely grateful. However, this was only processed after I submitted a formal complaint. It would have been preferable for the refund to be granted promptly upon my initial contact with customer service.

Please for heavens sake Which Customer Services, just answer the complaint in a simple, transparent and open manner. My question to Which is very simple. Do you receive a commission or remuneration from your promotion of Octupus Energy? The answer from this Consumer Company should be a simple yes or no. Instead the response from Which to my complaint and the many other complaints on this forum, is to continually refer consumers to their customer services department. Please Which just post an honest and open reply on this forum to the many complaints your Company generates.

Please do not subscribe to Which. They are the ‘Consumer champion’ but mislead you in payments. Despite being a member for a number of years they continued to charge me an inflated monthly amount. In addition they continue to take payments from my account following cancellation and a complaint. Which are guilty of everything they advise customers to avoid and I feel disappointed for being taken advantage of by such a company. Please do not be drawn in to signing up -AVOID

I joined Which? last week purely to obtain a Best Buy suggestion for a household appliance. Quite why Which? do not sell such information on a case-by-case basis rather than insisting we all sign up and then cancel immediately once we've downloaded the relevant document, I do not know!

Anyway, having subscribed and obtained my review I then wanted to cancel my subscription having paid the £5 minimum fee which I was quite happy to do. However, on getting to the correct webpage it said systems were in the process of being updated and "please try again later".

In the meantime, and by way of something of an aside, I received a couple of Witch? magazines in the post. I read them fairly thoroughly and was pretty shocked at some of the truly moronic things it had to say. For example, in a piece on room heaters it mentioned that a heater with a higher kW output will use more electricity and will heat up a room more quickly. If this is an example of the quality of assessment that Which? carries out when formulating its reviews, my advice would be *don't bother*.

So, a week later I decided to try again only to find exactly the same "Please try later" message on their webpage.

I then used the online chat facility to try to cancel as per the webpage information. I entered my name and other details as requested and waited for someone to connect. 10 minutes later someone responded and the first thing they did was to ask me my name. Why do I need to type my name in all over again having already done so to start the chat session, FCOL?!! In the meantime I got distracted by something else and by the time I returned to the chat it had ended.

This whole process is so utterly infuriating and unnecessary I cannot understand how Which? is still in business. The cynic in me thinks the whole "please try later" thing is just a scam, frankly, to put people off cancelling and thereby obtaining least another month's subscription.

My advice would be to have absolutely nothing to do with Which? and obtain your reviews somewhere else – Amazon is quite good. Judging by the number of negative reviews here on Trustpilot, lots of other people feel the same way!

I gave up on John Lewis and turned to Which? for help with my ongoing mattress saga. I should not have bothered.

I have been a member of the consumer association all my adult life. I trusted them with any reccommendation as independent reviewers.

This week I tried to get a simple answer: Of your Best Buys, which mattress compares in firmness to the old Tempur HD20? Something that one of the 'expert' they say we can call on demand should easily be able to answer. I also asked for an article on mattresses for back pain, none exist that I can find on the website. I asked for an explanation of their firmness scale as there is no mattress that scores below 5 (firm =1).

I have tried all week: phone, waited 20 mins noone answered, email no response all week, live chat does not work, phone again just now and they cannot put me through to the 'research team' I pay for. I had a very helpful person doing very badly what I can already do on the website - search.

No commitment to finding me an answer. Just the old platitudes they all use these days: we will pass the feedback on. What use is that? I need an answer. I pay my membership for that. BTW in the many years I have been a member this was the first time I called.

I come here and find an avarage 1.8 score. I was shocked. But I guess the Consumer Association is not what it once was, I will be cancelling my membership...if I can get through.

Edit after response: It seems the same process applies to their complaints email. I sent in the thread of my complaint and a short explanation. Automated email about how much they 'care'. Answer in 24 hours if you are lucky. So far? Crickets.

Edit again, after a response on email that said 'we are investigating'.

Crickets. as of 11 December 2024

Edit December 13th 2024 - Funny how I got a response the next day after posting above. The response simply restated in canned paragraphs that they were right and I was wrong to want a simple answer. Don't bother with this organisation, The Google Bot will be more polite and give you better info.

I raised a query with Which regarding my subscription, using their "LiveChat" function. The respondent was unable to answer my query but said they would contact the Marketing team and get back to me by email. I have had no response whatsoever. I've tried to contact them by phone but it is virtually impossible to speak to any one. Very ironic considering their Customer Service Counts campaign states the following "What happened to customer service? We're passed around from pillar to post, on hold for ages in frustrating phone queues. Companies say we're important to them - it's time to show us they mean it and put customers first."