Abel and Cole www.abelandcole.co.uk

Absolute disgrace of a company delivery service. I used to work in deliveries for many companies, inc Parcel Force. They took my number saying driver would call me if this is what I preferred. Guess what? I did not receive any phone call !! Then a lady who I could not understand at all, called me and messed my head up. I had 3 other deliveries during the same week from other companies, and everything arrived smoothly.

My neighbor mentioned that the parcel was left on their doorstep, and no one knocked at all!!!! Absolute shambles.

This was my order; Panforte, Organic, Daylesford (150g) £9.75 This is 10 cm The size of a biscuit. lovely taste

1Vegan Mincemeat & Apple Tart, Organic, Famous Hedgehog Bakery (650g) £14.95 19cm

1 Nut Roast, Gluten Free, Organic, Clive's (280g) £5.25 This is just under 10cm, it says for 2 so just under 5cm each.

1 Winter Vegetable Wellington with Cranberries, Organic, Lodge Farm Kitchen (500g) £14.00 16 cm by 2.07cm.

I also click for the 2 free hummus that was on offer but did not receive them.

Placed a reasonably substantial order and waited. All items ordered were 'one time' delivery only and not a repeat order. Delivery duly arrived but missing some items.

My outstanding items were scheduled to come the following week. However, the remaining items did not come up to their minimum spend. The website said 'put something else in your basket'.

I didn't really want anything else but complied to get the remaining part of my order delivered.

The final insult came when they charged me again for the second delivery.

On both occasions the food was left on the ground outside an unused door. No knock or ring to announce the delivery. We found it by accident later in the day.

Thankfully our local farm shop knocks them into a cocked hat with fresh local produce so we'll be getting our supplies there in future.

I was persuaded to sign up with them by one man knocking on my door. He explained that if I didn't want one item on the box I could exchange it for another one. I tried to do so for my first box, only to find out that I can only exchange it for a very small selection, not for what I needed. I decided to postpone my box as I really needed different stuff for this weekend.

The new day I received a phone call from a woman asking why I had nothing on my basket and I explained. She said we could go through it over the phone, but since I wasn't home I just didn't have time or my grocery list. She added that because there is a weight limit they limit what you can order to which I replied that I didn't want to shop in a place where I am limited to what they think I need.

She got angry and hung up.

I was looking forward to buying some veg mid week from this place. I buy six grade one broccoli's from the orange supermarket for 50p each, that's £3 a week. Abel and Cole charge £2.05 for one, excluding delivery, they're having a laugh, I don't care if it's organic, my broccoli's never go off and taste perfect. people who buy from this place must be daft or so rich, they don't care.

Unfortunately Abel and Cole sounds more idealistic than it is in reality.

I first began ordering in January 2012 after pledging to eat more healthily. We had the odd hiccup with an item being missed occasionally, or the dairy produce expiring quicker than the BBE label would suggest, but was always quickly rectified. I thought their customer service was great.

However, over the past year the delivery driver has changed numerous times (think I am on my 6th different driver now) and they do not follow delivery instructions properly. The logistics are a nightmare.

The final straw for me was today. I had gradually been phasing them out, only ordering the odd thing I really fancied as the quiche is, quite frankly, rather superb. However, I don't find the fruit & veg to be such a good deal anymore but liked the ethics behind it and supporting local farmers.

Our delivery arrived today at around 11.30am. The driver - who I have never seen before - drops our order off and puts the slip through the door and drives off. Odd, considering two cars were on the drive, but the dogs had warned me he was there anyway.

Ten minutes later I go to find my order dropped off in-between two of our overflowing bins (due to poor council deliveries over Christmas and NY) and put in a puddle with two bags of dog faeces on the floor, which had soaked into the cardboard! I am seven months pregnant and had to bend over to hulk the boxes inside, stinking.

Furious, I call Abel & Cole as I an unprepared to even use the food (he didn't even put a bag over the box or anything, considering the floor was wet) and was told, unapologetically that my delivery instructions say to leave 'near the bins' and therefore there is nothing they can do about it. Near the bins isn't exactly in the middle of dirty bins.

The lady also stated that the man 'wouldn't have seen' the dog faeces therefore it basically wasn't his fault. So effectively the drivers can leave your food contaminated anywhere and they won't accept any responsibility. Where is the common sense? We were in the middle of clearing the garden, a simple courtesy knock would have sufficed, but to leave our food like that is appalling. I don't buy that people can't see dog faeces. It would have been the same if it was contaminated food or anything to that effect. Pure stupidity is what I call it.

I have now had to throw away £40 worth of food. Furious, I have now cancelled all future orders and will migrate over to Ocado who I hear are rather good, and keep offering me £20 off. This should offset some of the Abel & Cole palaver.

Service outstanding! Logistics on the other hand are a chaos. Wrong itens, bread left out in the rain....

The flyer dropped through my door and I toyed with the idea, but cast it aside into the contents of my bin, discarding it like so my other opportunistic leaflets. Then over a course of several months another came, then another, and a bell of consideration rang through my mind. We endeavour to by organic, which is a real shame since all food should really be organic and not as it appears at this present time. So here I am presented with this opportunity to get all my organic whims played to with the contents of an aspiring brown box. I go online, fill in the details, select my box and ahhhaha...it is complete, all there is now, is the waiting. Two days past and I got up expectantly at 6am and found myself pleasantly surprised by the neat consigned parcels outside my house. Rushing to the kitchen I ushered my wife in for this most grand of openings; and that is where my issue is. We got a box sufficient to feed a family of five...but I beg to differ...I, have a family of five, I cook each day, and I ensure that my wife who works gets a slap up meal each night full of vegetables and goodness,,and this is not even considering my children. The onions were small and some less then firm and to be fair would've been able to muster enough effort to deal with three meals, and the potatoes would've done for four. The amount of fruit was nowhere near sufficient for a family of five and the ticking of 'I don't like asparagus' box did little to quell the ability to resist putting in my box. The bread was boarder line ok, and I do have to say that the milk was brilliant. So here I am, with my inadequate box of fruit and veg, a box that was supposed to remove my weekly quest for sourcing organic food,and I am left with the prospect of going to supermarket tomorrow to obtain the foods sufficient to feed my brood for the next seven days..I will not be purchasing from them again, I have no intention of throwing more money at it, making excuses for others..how many times does one have to get hit with a hammer to understand it hurts..once for me. To make matters a little worse, I'm still awaiting a response to an email sent about my despondence...interestingly, they did send me an email about how I have altered my selections for next week and that I have nothing yet in my basket. All I have to add is that you have been weighed, measured, and found wanting...

I have used A&C for about a year and find that sometimes I am delighted with my box and other items - with no complaints at all - The produce is fresh, healthy and the quantities as expected. Other times I find for example that the purple sprouting broccoli is already in full flower and there is very little of it, also fruit is often bruised. They seem to struggle with their bakers availability of produce too. Being able to adapt your box by editing likes and dislikes is a good device, however, as a company they appear to have an obsession with anything from the squash family and as they are often called weird and wonderful names it can be challenging to find them all in the edit list - so despite hating them I find that A&C will sneak one in to the box whatever I say! You have to watch out for creatures living in the broccoli too and I do wonder if their quality control at the packing stage sometimes let's them down. Overall I will continue to use them as their delivery is very reliable - even on bank holidays, their website is easily navigated, the recipes are excellent and their customer care over the phone is good. When they get it right they are excellent - they just need to aim for consistency of quality and put further checks in at packing stage. They could perhaps consider being proactive in checking their customer satisfaction by e mail a couple of times a year. I would recommend them to friends - it's a good initiative and on balance I am happy.

I wanted to support small business rather than supermarkets so I tried Abel and Cole for a while but their products weren't fresh and it wasn't one off disappointment. In the end I had to stop buying from them because they kept sending me moldy veg, fruits and even meat weren't fresh.

Idea was good though.