Which? Anmeldelser 700

I am surprised to read so many negative reviews about the cancellation process, as I was able to cancel my subscription on-line in less than 3 or 4 minutes. I did so about 25 days before the annual renewal date (which Which? notified me of six weeks in advance, as they promise), and still have access to all benefits until the actual end date of my subscription.

My reasons for cancelling after one year were that I had subscribed mostly to access information for just one or two purchases. Otherwise, I'm not a big consumer and I don't find that I need the information offered in an on-going way, and/or I'm able to find similar information through other services that I already use anyway (Money Saving Expert, The Guardian's Filter, and similar).

I do appreciate Which?'s role as a consumer advocate and wish there were a less expensive way to support them in those efforts. Perhaps they could offer a cheaper "supporter" subscription that helps sponsor their consumer advocate activities, and maybe offers a smaller benefit (e.g. one or two on-line searches or articles per month, without the app or magazine mailings; or another alternative).

Over the years I have been a member of WHICH a number of times. As a pensioner I cannot justify being a member WHICH constantly. I tried to cancel my membership today before the automatic renewal kicked in. I tried calling them three times, but on each occasion I was left hanging online without being connected. I also tried logging in to my account online but each time I was sent an authentication number instead to being connected to my account and then cancelling.
It seems to me that WHICH do everything they can to frustrate members from cancelling.

I joined specifically for electric heating reviews. The information is no better than you can find elsewhere for free. Looking at reviews for other things, I can't find anything that doesn't look skewed or lifted from elsewhere. Their main purpose seems to be to get you to buy from preferred suppliers using their links - I presume they're making money this way. I'm trying to cancel under the cooling off period but have written three times and got nowhere. Avoid taking out a subscription, cancelling is tricky and their admin is hopeless.

P.s. so I emailed the complaints team who emailed back to say I need to ring them. I can't be bothered wasting my time on the phone with them. There should be a simple mechanism to get your money back. I give up, life's too short.

Edit 24 Dec 2025 - I did get a refund, the complaints team admitted "an internal staff error" and processed the refund. If you're in the same situation, stick with it! I increased my star rating as they sorted it out in the end.

Generally very poor quality. I requested my money back once I could see the quality of the service (within the cooling off period) and the poor quality of service became even more apparent - ignored emails, the buck being passed around. I am still waiting to get my money back, and expect that it's going to take about a month in all to get it back (... fingers crossed!).

I didn't realise Which? had such a bad name until reading some of these reviews.
Have bought several of their so called Best Buys. Including AEG Pump drier. Waiting to have sensors replaced, engineer said these pump driers are always going wrong. Also Office chair from Ikea which is uncomfortable. Electric Throw blanket that is not very warm. They only test a limited amount of items from each category whether it electrical items, or food & drink etc. and even then they get it wrong. Also contacted their legal team for help. But no help at all.
I will NOT be renewing my membership.

They have a Trusted Trader scheme. It did catch my eye a while back and I purchased a fire surround, not cheap but ok price. I went with this large DIY store as they could arrange fitting, I am hopeless. After the surround arrived I obtained a quote for the fitting - yes stupid to “late. A truly ludicrous quote that the store manager thought crazy. In all fairness they collected and refunded. When contacting which they did confirm that pricing is not a consideration of trade assessment, so do keep this mind. I do not buy the magazine so cannot comment on that.

I am so angry with Which! Although I find it a useful source of information about various products, I think they treat their long standing customers very badly. For quite a long time, I've been paying £8.99 a month for digital only access but now see that they are offering full i.e. both digital and print access for an annual payment of £49.50. They say this compares with a normal charge of £99 which is considerably less than I am paying for digital only membership. Shame on you Which!

Beware, it is very difficult to cancel your membership. I spent about 20 minutes going around in circles. They say to go to the cancellation section in the accounts section. There wasn’t one!!!
Eventually, I managed to find a live chat. I put in my request and it took five minutes to be read. I put my phone down as I didn’t know how long it was going to take and when I looked again, they had cancelled my chat, within three minutes, saying I hadn’t responded!
It said to start another chat and that the next person would review my details. I entered the details that they requested and was then told that I had to do it AGAIN because it was a new chat!!!
For a business proporting to be a consumer organisation this is totally unacceptable. They are obviously deliberately making it as hard as possible to cancel.
Then they had the cheek to offer me six months at half price !!! How is this fair to anybody else?

I am a digital member of Which. I made a complaint about the auto-renewal of membership. They rejected the complaint the next day!
A rogue organisation that doesn’t practise what it preaches!
They always advise consumers not to auto-renew their
Subscriptions with insurance companies & the like. But this is precisely what they force on all members.
No facility to cancel membership online.
They send email prior to renewal & you have to phone to cancel it. Long wait on the phone.
Not the old Which? of many years ago. Deteriorated significantly. Hence, such Poor Trustpilot reviews.
They make cancellation a hard process to protect their income. A body claiming to represent consumers has turned into charlatans themselves!
Thinking seriously about leaving them after many decades. If you are not already a member Keep Away!

We bought a Samsung washing machine based on their best buy. This was a mistake as the washing machine never worked properly and Samsung support is non existent. Cancelling my membership as sadly, I just don't trust Which recommendations anymore.

Ultimately we had to buy another washing machine as Samsung never repaired or replaced the failing one.

I think Which should evaluate reliability and customer support and they currently do not do that.

We now live in a world where appliances no longer last as long as those used to so we just cannot ignore planned obsolescence.

Another issue I got was with the Sage Bambino coffee machine. I bought it years ago when it was a best buy.
Sadly, this espresso machine does leak. It is a design flaw and not specific to the machine I got. It is a widespread problem which is very well documented all over the web.

Same issue here, I do not understand why Which is flagging a coffee machine with such a design flaw as a best buy.

It does amazing coffee indeed but who likes a coffee machine leaking by design?

To the Which team: I think you need to focus a bit less on how energy efficient or how well washing machine, dishwasher, etc. do clean, and start considering how long those would last and how good is their customer service.
You need to go back to the fundamentals, we, the customers, want appliances which first and foremost do work.

In the end I bought two appliances based on Which recommendations and for those two I did regret it quite quickly.

Disappointing. I have cancelled the subscription within minutes of starting a subscription -

The Digital Magazine is really good, clear and easy to use. The website is easy also and for the price of the subscription is worth every penny. Which magazine has saved me a small fortune over the years.

Have been a subscriber for a while! But they do not really show much interest in gaining an actual consumer insight comment in the way they have set up their contact page options. We may not have a problem just want to be helpful. It is their loss. I do not really wish to engage with their consumer social media as latter is a haven for annoyance.

Response from review author to Which. Unfortunately the blue tab is invisible unless one first clicks on 'Opt in' tab. Hence my problem it seems. This is not made clear on the webpage.

I have just signed up to Which? on their Black Friday deal. Despite having been a disappointed member many times previously over the years, I thought I’d give them another try in the hope that they might have improved. Alas it seems not.
I was attracted again by their Google search Ad that stated ‘Don’t buy washer/dryers’ because our AEG is continually playing up. So as soon as my membership was confirmed, I went straight to washer/dryers and searched for ‘Don’t Buys’. Guess what, there aren’t any. How dumb is that?
What’s equally bad in my view is that when you use their ‘filter’ to search for particular brands, no matter what brand you select, it comes up with nil found, despite lots of the specified brand being shown in the reviews.
So, once again, I am disappointed with Which? and will be cancelling shortly.

Distrustful organisation, still charged me a subscription after I had cancelled. Some years ago I followed their recommendation for Spark energy being good. It was a con. Spark eventually went bust

I pay a subscription to Which Technology and need advice urgently. No appointments available for 1 month!!

Charlatans who should practise what they preach...

Decided to cancel my subscription, WELL before the renewal date, so imagine my surprise that this CANNOT be done from the website, but one must jump through hoops by phoning them or hanging about wasting time on the "live" chat. 15 minutes and no response is enough for me to not bother with that route.

Why no option to cancel on the website where I signed up? They spend enough time banging on about others using such underhand tactics to make cancelling an automatic renewal difficult.

So I emailed with clear instructions to cancel. It took them 4 days to get back to me but the cancellation was confirmed.

Imagine my surprise when checking my card balance yesterday to find £99 scheduled to come off and my subscription having been renewed for another year, despite my clear instructions for you to cancel and your reply confirming this!

Now I find myself having to shell out an extra £99 for nothing on my credit card this statement when I could have been doing with access to those funds.

Maybe time to get off your high horse and set an example by actually practising what you preach!

Again I tried the "live" chat yesterday, another 15 minutes of nothing, not even an acknowledgement.

I can only hope that the chargeback I will have to file with my bank and the extra costs you will incur will clear your minds somewhat.

Avoid these hypocrites is my "advice".

edit: a shocking response that shows they didn't even read my review.

I think the majority of the other reviews here says it all about them really.

edit again: Went on to the chat again before contacting my bank, which I will be doing anyway to report the unathorised, fraudulent transaction seeing as I am expected to be £99 down for "up to 14 working days" before the stolen money hits my account and managed to talk to some guy/bot trying to give me the hard sell to stay, copy and pasting crap asking me why I want to leave (er, I HAVE ALREADY LEFT AND HAD IT CONFIRMED!), and "making me aware" I will lose the access (er again...)

Obviously didn't even bother to read my original message.

Seriously, as I told the chat representative, this behaviour is WORSE than some of the shady businesses you bang on and on about year after year.

No wonder there's a multitude of 1 star reviews on here, what a terrible state of affairs for a once great organisation to fall into.

F'ing Useless.

Here's the level of customer service you can expect:

11/05/2025 09:48 AM GMT
You Hi, I've emailed on Monday and tried to get on the chat as well but nobody responded. I cancelled my membership and received email confirmation but checking my bank I see you have taken the £99 payment without authorisation. I'm looking to have this refunded immediately please.

11/05/2025 09:49 AM GMT
Roderick W I can certainly check that for you. Could you please confirm your full name, postcode and address so that I can retrieve your account information?

(details given)

11/05/2025 09:50 AM GMT
You I emailed to cancel on 20th October and received a confirmation 4 days later, 24th October. Why you cannot just cancel directly from the website I do not understand especially given the nature of the work Which magazine does.

11/05/2025 09:52 AM GMT
Roderick W "?? Thanks for waiting. I can see that you're currently subscribed to our Which? Full Access subscription for £99.99 a year. Is there a particular reason you'd like to cancel?" (lol, he even left the quotes from his copy and paste in there, jeezo)

You oh my goodness, did you even read my original query?

11/05/2025 09:53 AM GMT
You I have ALEADY cancelled and due to some ineptitude you have taken the payment anyway!

Roderick W Just to make you aware,? this gives you access to our test
reviews, copies of our Which? Magazine, magazine
archive, apps, guides and more.

You Forget it, I''ll just get on to my bank to carry out a chargeback for the fraudulent, unathorised transaction you have taken.

11/05/2025 09:55 AM GMT
Roderick W As the payment has already gone out, I offer you a 50% refund and you could keep the subscription for the year?

You no

11/05/2025 09:56 AM GMT
You seriously, this is worse than the businesses the consumer association bang on about year after year! Maybe you should be investigating yourselves for these underhand practises?

Roderick W Ok , I will cancel the subscription effective immediately and refund you.

11/05/2025 09:57 AM GMT
You Finally. I'll be reporting it to my bank anyway, this is bang out of order, I'm just expected to be short £99 for days because of the fraudulent, unathorised transaction

You f****** useless

Roderick W I can confirm that you will be refunded £99 back onto the original payment method for this subscription. This may take up to 14 working days.
You'll receive a receipt confirming this shortly.

I took out a "paper" subscription to "Which?", assuming that I would have access to All their reports.
I now find that some of the tests covered in their Newsletter are only available to "Premium Content" (online?) subscribers.
I'm sure that, if "Which?" was conducting a test of their own Subscription offers, they would come out as a "Poor [if not misleading] Buy"!

Not what they claim they are. It is a rip off and lot of older people who believe in this will be getting ripped off.

In fact, there is a case to say that if a tradesman says they are "Which approved", run a mile and save your money. It almost certainly means you will pay over the roof and might get usual service and tricks and cons.

Basically, the tradesmen they "approve" are not 100%. They charge higher much higher prices for carrying "Which" logo. In my experience, these folks profit immensely. Which has no liability towards the consumer. They will never take consumers side if a tradesmen has created extra work by scaring the customer, or things like that. e.g. Electrical works where fusebox replacement is concerned.

I was amazed to learn of all the areas which? has to offer. I thought they just did reviews but having heard Which? referenced on TV and at the supermarket so much i checked the out online. I was amazed to learn how much they do to advocate for consumer rights and safety for all consumers in the uk. On top of that they self fund with services to remain independent. I used their legal services for a home kitchen installation issue that went wrong. Trader had stopped responding to me. The legal team who were very qualified helped me get my trader back and the worl done. Im just shocked how helpful this company is and so vital in this day and age given everyone seems to be just out to get your money for low quality items or service. Easy to use service and the fact its a charity 10 out of 10. I give a little money to charity each month woth no expectation of a return, just the good feels of doing something good. Having my Which subscription is the same but I get help to make better and safe personal decisions.