I Canadian guy I used to work with told me about a remotely similar idea where he lived in Canada. One day per year, everyone put outside their homes any unwanted items they did not want. People would drive around, find things they wanted and take them. At the end of the week, the council would clear anything that remained uncollected. I think it would be great if we done thst here. Dave

I too have found Amazon's customer service excellent. I once got a faulty item and it was replaced immediately. On another occasion, I accidently ordered the same book twice. I used their sticky label to return it, which meant I paid no postage, but expected to have the postage subtracted from the refunded amount. It was my stupidity ordering two copies of the same book. But Amazon refunded the full price, including paying the carraige for what was my mistake. If all companies were like Amazon, forums like this would not be needed! Dave

It appears the pictures will not display. You wil just have to accept that the way these were returned was not accepable. At the time they were returned, it was not known whether they could be repaired or not, so it was important not to mis-treat them.

I have insurance with Barclays, which is undwritten by Gresham insurance. Some computer equipment of mine got damaged by ligthning and IVAL were appointed to sort it out. What a disaster that company is. At 45 years old, I've dealt with a number of companies over the years. IVAL are in the bottom 3 of my list for the most incompetant. (It's hard to say who of the 3 was the worst, but IVAL is one of the worst 3 companies I have ever dealt with in my life). I am surprised they remain in business. They were sent two computers, a modem and a printer. The two computers were a bit unusual and Ival could not test them. (A competant person could have done, with a bit of reading on the internet, but they decided to send them back to me, and I get them tested by a local company, as I had found one which could test them. It took them over 2 weeks to decide this) I was told the computers would be with me Monday of last week, but instead they sent the printer and modem. IVAL had already tested these, found at least the printer beyond economic repair (they have not told me about the modem). Then I was told the computers would be with Tuesday, but nothing arrived. That's two whole days wasted. They don't even give an AM/PM time for delivery. Then I was told the computers would be with me Wedneday of last week. The computers finally arrived on the Wednesday. One came back with two pieces of plastic broken off the case. One of the bits they broke off they sent me back in a bag. In the other computer, which is a very thin unit, you can see the cover is not flat as it should be. They could not even be bothered to put the cover on properly before shipping it back to me. There are a few extra scratches on it too, though the major scratches on this unit were not their fault. One IVAL employee failed to return phone calls for 4-5 days. A women claims to have tried to ring me several times on my mobile, but I know it was switched on, and the call log shows no missed calls. They appear to lie a lot. IVAL also go under numerous different names. Someone has mentioned 'PowerPlay. That is certainly true, as when the items were collected from me, the return address given to me by the courier was PowerPlay. But I found an email send to ival.co.uk with an invalid username (try something like [email protected]) got a return from [email protected]. So IVAL are certainly connected with BeValued too, which also reside at the same post code. BeValued I suspect IVAL are also part of 'Validation & Insurance Services Ltd' I also suspect they sell off used PC bits on on ebay under the user name ' pc-laptop-spares' (The latter has a pretty good feedback record on eBay, which surprises me given how incompetent IVAL are) Here's some pictures of how my two computers were returned, complete with the part which they broke off and put in a bag for me. The annoying thing is, if you used a shop and found they were incompetant, you would stop using them. I must say, so far Barclays Insurance has been quite helpful. They can see why I am frustrated, and have contacted IVAL several times. Barclays even phoned me once on a Saturday and called Ival and got Ival to call me on the Saturday. They did do that, but the person that called was not sufficiently senior, so I had to wait several days more to get any sort of response. Now I find the women in charge of my case is a liar. The best bit of news though is that IVAL can't source any of the parts and are refering it back to my insurers. Why they can't get the modem is beyond me, since it is a current model, available from Dabs, Amazon and countless other places. PS, my user name is my real name.