Smiths News Reviews 71

I wonder why this company hasn’t shut down, the service from top to bottom and left to right is awful. More like conmen then professionals. They owe me a huge amount in credits, but they are turning blind eye every time. I give them a call and they transfer me to every tom, dick and harry. Very incompetent.

Smithsnews request customers to provide number of copies of TV magazines required. Smithsnews then arbitrarily cut the numbers after the date for changes. The copies requested are for home delivery, however the WH Smiths shops that DO NO deliveries are filled with an abundance of copies many of which are returned. How is this dreadful organisation Monopoly? Where is the Monopoly Commission? Competition is needed to activate Smithsnews. Whoever manages to start the competition will gain many customers on day 1

Words cannot describe just how awful this company is. They are rude, corrupt, fraudulent, abusive towards customers in their mannerism of speaking and will happily change T&C's and lie to you regarding any agreement you have with them.

I was due to have my deposit back 3 weeks ago, was promised it back 3 times, I finally called again asking where it is (due to hard times I am desperate for my money back to put into other stock) and they have decided that as I missed 2 payments (although I called the following day and paid) they are now going to keep my deposit until June next year "at a minimum" - meaning they have changed the T&C's as it mentions no where that this could happen, and they can't even give me a correct date as to when I can next attempt to retrieve my money.

They will talk to you on the phone as though you are scum, and they are unapologetic when they make mistakes.

If you try and call them, you'll get through to someone if they can be bothered to pick up the phone after maybe 15+ attempts, but don't expect a friendly voice or customer service of any kind. They will transfer you to someone else without telling you mid conversation if they cannot be bothered to talk to you.

Rude, nasty, horrid company. I truly wish there was an alternative company. If there is someone representing an alternative company reading this PLEASE contact me. I need to get away from these horrid horrid people.

I don't know why I'm bothering to write this, because if you're thinking about using Smith's News, you'll know you have no other option. They have no competitors and their customer service shows it.

All the negative comments are correct, this is literally the worst company I have ever come across. They lied to us about the margin we would make when we signed up for them, they took months to set up a Direct Debit, during which time we got our newspaper supply stopped because we hadn't paid them (!) even though we tried to pay by credit card only to find you can never get through to them.

They constantly send us magazines we don't want and don't have space for, we have asked them time and time again not to do so, to no avail.

I would say 'avoid them', but you can't. All you can do is be aware that if you live in the South of England and want to sell newspapers then you'll have to deal with these clowns.

Not even worthy of one star. Stay well clear of this company. They are nothing but a rip off bunch of incompetents. They owe me over £900 for my deposit back but just keep fobbing me off. Saying someone will get back to me but never does. It’s been a month now and still no deposit back. Their customer service is beyond shockingly bad. The orders are seldom right and often short but you have to fight to retrieve the money they take out of my account. Sometimes the vouchers are totally wrong on their part but they charge you anyway for their mistakes. STAY CLEAR OF THIS COMPANY.

Horrible place. after 2 days starting work. 2 performance meetings with management having a go at me and swearing just disgusting behaviour. I was close to having panic attack. they treat you like slaves and robots not humans. i ain't going back to that slavery camp. other that that the team were brilliant just very poor management. they dont care about you just the work. enuff said.

poor service,our local shop central stores plymouth ,has constant problems with smiths. today no telegraphs delivered, despite apromise to redeliver they didn,t.they now don,t deliver the papers till nearly 8 am. utterly useless co ,running a monopoly and don,t they know it

This is fraudulent company. There only goal is to bankrupt shop owners.
They cahrge you, never give credits back. Their staff is rude and lazy and on top of all that their drivers are thieves. They make money off charging shop owners ridiculous amounts and when you ask them not to send something because it doesn't sell they will send you hundreds of those items. I'm so done with them. It's not even a customer magnet as much anymore. If you live in Wales and want to own a local convienence store, I highly recommend looking into another paper company or just not doing them all together.

Terrible experience. They are swallowing money like anything. They are charging delivery charge which grab all of the weekly profit. Sometimes we need to pay them from our hand with loss. Also they are not giving proper return credits. If anyone not aware of it, They swallow around £100 each week. I am not sure how many stores are struggling with them. Even I am watching carefully, I need to have a big discussion with them to get the credits. Also you need to check properly every time the claim is credited. In SNAPP, it is showing the claim is accepted. When you see the paperwork, half or less of the quantities credited. You need to chase them three or four times to get the credit. Please be aware with them.

This has to be the worst company in the world, god only knows how they stay in business (well I do actually it is only because there is no other option) my nearest depot is 10 minutes up the road yet I have to go through a phone line based in India, it has been years since I have actually managed to speak to someone based in the UK, Smiths news will be the death of many small newsagents, I have hundreds of A4 sheets filled with thousands of issues/incorrect credits/over-charges and there seems to be no where to escalate the problems to, at the moment I have 3 major issues on the go including the fact that we have gone from drop off number 2 to drop off number 9 meaning we have to open our shop an hour later every Saturday, how can that be right when our drop off is supposed to be based on our opening time, not the other way round, I hope this company goes under and someone else takes over that actually cares if they damage the business they are supplying. I would put money on the fact if someone does contact me from Smiths they will not be calling me from the UK

Terrible service and terrible staff in the call centre.

Weekly complaints having to be submitted due to their errors with little or no attempt at resolution by the call centre staff.

Papers missing, re-delivery very late which impacts on home delivery and results in us having to do runs twice at our cost.

Return claims regularly incorrect, again requiring chasing up.

We have contacted the CEO a couple of times and he has been helpful but there are no improvements in service after this contact.

Maybe the CEO needs to contact his customers to get a bit of feedback to look at service improvements.

Smith’s News: your customers are paying for this service, is it so hard to just get it right?

Happy to be contacted to discuss.

I have been having problems for last one year . Finally, contacted careline 2 weeks ago and they assured about services ,got 2-3 calls from different dept. I thought may be now they will be sincere towards their work. BUT NO constantly I am having problems with deliveries , accounts . This is the worst company I have ever worked with............

Awfull, awfull, awfull send items you don't want and even credit them. Then the direct debit coms out of you account for £100s of pounds more. Still attempting to reconcile but not having any joy. They just say give us 24 hours to resolve, but after 24 hours to they say the same.

I’ve made a petition – will you sign it?

Please find the petition (Shutdown Smiths News (Most Corrupt Company) on hanks,
The Petitions UK Government and Parliament

Been a customer for many years,there is never a week when everything goes right,but usually gets sorted eventually. This time I've requested my invoice 5 times (5 days consistently) and still not received it! So annoying to say the least,way can't the staff in Nottingham get thing right? Plus customer services is in India & all they can do is email Nottingham,which I'm sure Nottingham doesn't read!

Not even worthy of 1 star!! I have tried ringing with an account query 5 times and each time the operator put the phone down on me! Beyond shocking customer service!! I doubt I will ever get to the bottom of my query!!

Avoid them at all costs, if there's any other newspaper and magazine suppliers go for it. Even if the prices are more. They are THE worse company in the UK, the staff are rude and undertrained. They leach of small businesses like us by charging for magazines and papers and not sending them and then you are left chasing them for weeks to get your money back.

ALL of their staff are uneducated (apart from the drivers) and I mean this on a serious level. And to think their customer services couldn't get worse. They moved it to India! Where the staff are even more clueless and have the same I not give a f*** mentality as their staff in the UK, the only thing that's consistent with Smith News! Charged me for £300 delivery during the pandemic even though I was closed and had informed them way in advance. This was in April and I am still chasing them to get my money back. All their "managers" are again undertrained and have no real skill. They are full of fake promises like Shreeram, Arthur and Rohit. They can't even call the customer back. Every single staff member, and I mean this has a I don't give a F*** attitude they are not bothered about your problems, they don't want to resolve any issues. For example, when they charged me for delivery during the pandemic and I can hear the "advisor" Sonali relaxing in the park chatting and talking to her friends. Just yesterday when I was on the phone to Shreeram whilst I was complaining to him about the delivery charges during the pandemic and why nothing is being done, I can hear him sending and receiving messages on what's app and he is meant to be a MANAGER!!!

Any issues I have from here on I will be posting each issue on here along with the "customer service" advisors name to document how terrible this company is. Something needs to be done now, I've sent too many complaints and nothing is being done. LITERALLY!

Mr. Charotar

P.S. The drivers are TOP CLASS people no issues with them whatsoever.

Terrible. Probably one of the worst companies to work with - every single day they send far less papers than the delivery note. This is then charged and you need to go through a process to claim it back. The number of errors is, in my opinion, showing a fraudulent operation rather than pure negligence. AWFUL. Avoid.

what a W@nker of a company worst company that i have ever dealt with. I run a busy shop. since taking over the business the problems and troubles haven't ended with smiths news. they cant get anything correct. But that not the worst of things they have a complete monopoly over the newspaper supply chain and there isn't any other company who does deliveries to retailers and the government isn't doing anything about it.

For a company that provides newspapers to a variety of clients they really have their heads up their arses. Mags and newspapers are missing from the order every week WITHOUT FAIL and don't even think about trying to call them up to resolve it. Because in the best scenario they will offer to send them tomorrow and then refund you once *you* have corrected them to say funnily enough you can't sell a Saturday paper on a Sunday. In some scenarios they will literally blame you for not putting in the claim the night before even though you obviously can't put in a claim for a paper that arrives on the same day. They will also berate you about claims for other days and separate issues instead of resolving the situation you called in for in the first place. It's clear they need a complete restructuring of supply and/or telesales staff.