Phil & Mel Coles Latimer

It's clean, the machines have always been in working order, and the locker rooms are clean, although you do need to bring your own lock for the lockers (they do sell them). There are classes available with membership, although I've not attended myself. They lose a star for me because they've replaced having front desk staff with having a weird door entry system - sort of like arrivals at an airport where a door opens, you step into a cylinder, it shuts you in, and then the door opens on the other side. You have to first enter a pin, which gets awkward when someone is doing the same thing on the other side. I'm sure there's staff available, but without a front desk to greet you they feel very inaccessible and it all feels quite automated. In that sense I guess my rating is mainly for the facilities as customer service is a bit nonexistent. Otherwise it has most things I need in a gym - good weight machines, treadmills, stairs, lots of facilities on the mats.

We've used National express for eight journeys (four round trips). On one of them a few years ago, a driver hit scaffolding with the bus and all the windows exploded. We told another bus driver at the station the story and he said that sort of thing happens all the time because they push people through training too quickly. We were offered free tickets for our next journey as compensation, but we were hesitant to use the service again - it didn't feel like good customer service to force us to use their service again instead of giving a full refund. We tried them again to go on a return trip to Paris, and that was a good journey both ways. But recently, we went to Edinburgh and the drive up on a night bus was horrendous. The driver almost hit a red double decker bus (as in, he disregarded that there was a left lane next to him when turning left on a round about) and kept honking the whole way. He also waited till the last minute to slow down at round abouts and it was impossible to sleep. When we arrived they yelled at everyone to hurry up gathering their things - I understand he wants to go home, but we were waiting for people to clear the aisle so we could grab our things. The driver on the way back was great, and we had a very different night bus experience - it was very gentle comparatively, even in the London part of the journey. Unfortunately 2/8 trips being dangerous is a really poor standard for a bus company - not to mention that their compensation is to give us free tickets to continue to use their unsafe service. I'm not big on leaving bad reviews, but purely from a safety standard I can't leave over two stars in good conscience.

We were travelling in South Korea and trying to send some important items back home. Having not provided us with the appropriate labels, our parcel was not being collected at our hostel, nor was Parcel Hero updating us as to why. We had to raise an enquiry to get this information, and eventually had to leave our parcel with our hostel for collection. After leaving, Parcel Force informed us the driver did not collect the parcel because the customs forms were not attached - customs forms which they did not provide us in the PDF file of labels to attach. We then had to convince the hostel to print 7 copies as per request of the courier, and attach 3 to the box. Thankfully they were able to do this for us, otherwise our parcel would have been stuck there. Our parcel did arrive, but arrived a great deal later as a result of this as well, and we recieved zero shipping updates from Parcel Force. Thankfully we eventually downloaded the app Shippity to track our parcel instead. We tried to raise this with Parcel Force for a refund, or even a partial refund, but they class this as, and I quote, "Force Majuere" for not providing us with the appropriate labels, which prevented collection and caused so much stress. Apparently their own service failure is now considered a factor outside of their control. If you're shipping internationally, avoid this company. Just pay extra and book directly with a courier.

I will add that the customer service rep was helpful in getting us information or I'd have given one star, but otherwise this was an extremely stressful situation. Had we known it wouldn't be straightforward due to lack of paperwork from Parcel Force we would have done things differently.