Chosen by a judging panel from nominations by our in-house experts, these brands, products and services may have failed an industry standard, broken the law, caused consumers detriment or confusion, or been rated poorly in our customer surveys or lab tests.
Find out which companies made the final cut below.
Tesco's lack of unit pricing on Clubcard prices
We've given Tesco a Shoddy as we believe it could be breaking consumer law by not displaying unit pricing on its Clubcard offers.
The unit price - or price per 100g for example - allows shoppers to compare the prices of different products, and see which is best value during a time when food inflation is through the roof. Every little helps, after all.
Tesco says that its pricing practices have been checked and endorsed by Trading Standards.
After Which? reported Tesco to the CMA amid concerns the practice was potentially illegal, the supermarket announced plans to add unit pricing to Clubcard offers, starting in the new year. Which? looks forward to Tesco making good on that pledge.
Facebook's fake review trading groups
Every year since 2018, we’ve uncovered groups trading in fake reviews on Facebook. That's sellers offering free products in exchange for five-star reviews - a practice strictly against Amazon's terms and conditions.
We estimate the groups we’ve reported to the platform total 1.5 million members.
But as recently as April this year we found a further 14 groups trading in reviews for Amazon, Google My Business and Trustpilot, sharing more than 62,000 members between them.
Maybe Fakebook would be a more appropriate name than Facebook.
Alfa Romeo: most unreliable car brand
It's official. Driving an Alfa Romeo could drive you round the bend.
Our 2022 car survey revealed results including 39% of Alfas aged 0-4 years old snagging a fault in the 12 months covered by the survey, and around 14% of cars breaking down.
That's more than twice as likely to serve you up a problem as average.
With earlier 10-15 year old models, a huge 53% suffered a fault and 17% had at least one breakdown.
Wizz Air: the UK's worst airline
A Shoddy for the least whizzy of airlines.
In our 2022 customer survey, it received a score of 48% and a string of sub-par ratings.
It's also the least punctual airline according to the Civil Aviation Authority, with more than 2% of its flights more than three hours late, in the year to September 2022.
In March 2023, we asked Trust Online, the only register for county court judgments (CCJs), to give us data on CCJs against the five biggest airlines in the UK and Wizz Air.
Wizz Air accounted for almost half of the number of CCJs – despite being the smallest in terms of passenger numbers – and owed £2.2m to customers.
Wizz Air admitted that the pandemic had led to issues, but said it had settled hundreds of CCJs and was working to resolve those outstanding as soon as possible, although it said postal issues had caused delays. Affected customers can contact Wizz Air directly.
TVs without accessibility features
Blind and partially sighted people should surely be able to enjoy television without paying extra for accessibility features such as screen readers.
But our testing of the accessibility features of TVs in 2022 found that Hisense didn’t include a screen reader on any of the 2022 models we tested.
And three other big-name brands – Panasonic, Philips and Sony – only have screen readers on their higher-end models, forcing partially-sighted customers to pay more.
LG and Samsung have shown that it’s possible to have a full suite of accessibility features across all TVs, so there’s no excuse for these other big brands not to step up and deliver too.
Telecoms providers with mid-contract price rises
When you sign up to a broadband or mobile phone contract with telecoms providers including BT, TalkTalk, and Vodafone, you're signing up to a big unknown.
Providers increase the cost of your deal in springtime by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate of inflation - an unknowable amount – plus an extra 3% to 3.9%. In some cases, telecoms providers such as Virgin Media and O2 use the outdated Retail Price Index (RPI) which is typically even higher than CPI.
And if you want to escape contractual price rises, you'll face hefty exit fees if you're within your minimum contract period.
Customers are being squeezed enough and we think it’s bad practice to trap people in contracts where price rises are potentially unclear and can’t be avoided. Affected customers should always be allowed to switch without penalty.
Inaccurate digital thermometers
Three unreliable digital thermometers from Béaba, Beurer and Boots could leave you hot under the collar after we found them repeatedly failing to measure temperatures accurately.
They gave readings that were too low, which could delay getting essential medical help for a fever.
International standards state that thermometers can be out by up to 0.3°C, but the Boots thermometer was 0.7°C too cool, on average.
Unsustainable artificial grass
A Shoddy for the type of lawn that comes at a significant environmental cost.
We’ve removed all artificial grass Best Buys and no longer test the un-green green stuff.
Plastic lawns are terrible for local wildlife and lead to a reduction in biodiversity. They also can’t absorb carbon dioxide or release oxygen, unlike natural grass which contributes to air purification. Loose fibres may be hazardous to certain wildlife, as well as contributing to microplastic pollution.
Fake lawns are often made using virgin plastic, have a shelf life of roughly 10 to 15 years and require regular upkeep. At the end of their life some can be recycled, but in most cases artificial grass is incinerated or goes to landfill.
Safety concerns with Babyzen Yoyo Connect pushchair
This pushchair stood out in testing for all the wrong reasons, leading our expert panel to hand out a Shoddy.
It’s very difficult to safely tilt the pushchair up onto kerbs: it has two handles, and if you tilt using the rear handle closest to you, then the stroller pivots in the centre and tips forward.
During our handlebar test, it snapped on one side. It’s also hard to manoeuvre, has a bumpy ride and the handlebar is uncomfortably narrow.
Babyzen says the product is safe to use and compliant.
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/introducing-the-which-shoddies-azxwA9R1ca0I