jack

We also didn't pressurise. The only leak we had was the poor electrician nicking one of the pipes with a screw while installing some protective steel around a floor box when our concrete overlay was being poured.

I had a similar problem with some Dell laptops that were bought for a small business I was involved with about 10 years ago. A known problem with overheating caused the graphics chip to fail, often when the machine was 1-3 years old. They eventually extended the warranty for domestic customers, but refused to do anything about it for business customers at the time. The other problem was that the repair didn't actually fix the problem, so they tended to fail another 1-3 years later, usually after the extended warranty had run out. I was put through to some utter cretins in India who basically laughed at me and told me to take it to court if I thought I had a case. They were right, in a way. I didn't have the time or inclination to fight it. I left the business shortly afterwards, although not before we'd bought a large stack of laptops from another vendor. I've never bought a new Dell machine since, and I never will. They lost business worth well over £10k over the refusal to repair 3 laptops. Great business! I've now had a further reply from John Lewis: "Thank you for your email regarding your recent online review.I can confirm that you can view the Terms and Conditions on writing a review at the following link:https://www.johnlewis.com/customer-services/information-about-our-terms-and-conditions/terms-and-conditions-for-ratings-and-reviewsWhen you did the review online the Terms and Conditions are there for you to view and agree to prior to submitting your online review. If you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact us." The terms give them the right to refuse to post any review at their sole discretion, without reason. I can't see how that's anything other than hugely misleading - people reading the reviews on the website aren't led to read the terms and conditions. I think it's fair to assume as a reader that any honest review will be posted, but that clearly isn't the case. A couple of reviews on Trust Pilot also mentioned that their reviews had been rejected. It scares me to say that I trust now Amazon a lot more than I trust John Lewis! Annoyingly, that's the entire response to my last email. It seems they've lost interest in actually dealing with the "unsafe" product they were so worried about yesterday! More angry emails to be sent...

Ah, makes sense, thanks.

Am I right that the capacitor is just providing a lower impedance path for the induced current? If so, I assume that means it consumes at least the same amount of power this way. Seems unfortunate that there's no easy way (other than better circuit design) to avoid this continuous energy leak.

As long as you aren't in a tearing hurry, and postage isn't too much, order the minimum you can get away with and then do a follow-up order once you've started installing and can see exactly what you need. Tight fisted is good. I reckon we wasted £200+ on bits and pieces we didn't need. I can't even give them away, as it's a bit of an unusual duct format.

Can't solid-core doors be trimmed by that much? The bottom edge would likely then be end grain, but is that the end of the world in that position (genuine question)? I suppose the risk is cupping or distortion due to the lack of end piece. We bought plain (primed) solid fire doors locally from somewhere like Benchmarx (or maybe one of the big builders' merchants) and I was amazed at how cheap they were.

So the saga continues. I wrote to customer services asking for their reason for rejecting my review, and asking for a copy of their policy for posting online reviews. I've just received a reply. The policy question has been ignored. This is their reasoning for not posting the review: "I am concerned to hear of the issues you have experienced with this item and sincerely apologise we were unable to approve your review. As your review made reference to the safety of the item, which is specific to your item caused by a fault, it did not accurately reflect the quality of the item." Just extraordinary. This is Trump-level reasoning. Incidentally, a company I recently bought something from asked me to put a review on Trust Pilot yesterday. While there, I checked how John Lewis fared. Surprisingly, they have an absolutely horrific rating of 1.5 stars. They are close to last in nearly every rating category: Categories John Lewis is ranked 102 out of 103 in the category Activewear John Lewis is ranked 74 out of 75 in the category Bags and Luggage John Lewis is ranked 1564 out of 1578 in the category Clothes & Fashion John Lewis is ranked 1017 out of 1031 in the category Electronics John Lewis is ranked 231 out of 235 in the category Gifts John Lewis is ranked 2536 out of 2550 in the category Home & Garden John Lewis is ranked 204 out of 208 in the category Shoes John Lewis is ranked 586 out of 591 in the category Sport John Lewis is ranked 58 out of 58 in the category Toys & Games Looking at some of the reviews, they have serious issues with deliveries and order management. This actually accords with my own experience. I'd forgotten that when we ordered a dryer from them a couple of years ago, I sat around through their entire 7 hour delivery window, only for it not the arrive. I rang them and was told that traffic had delayed them and they've need to re-attempt the delivery another day. No phone call, no apology, nothing. I'm pretty annoyed about the current situation. Unfortunately, I'm drowning in work at the moment or I'd make a project out of turning the screws on them. On the plus side, they're clearly interested in solving the actual problem of the defective product.

Yep. And that brings in the London peeps too. When we unexpectedly decided to move countries several years ago, we sold a 10 month old, quality brand fridge in perfect condition on ebay for 40% of what we paid for it new. Nice photos, good description, excellent ebay rating as a seller. I nearly cried.

Do you know whether there's a site that lists what they have for sale? I had a quick look but couldn't see anything. Our washing machine is due for replacement in the near future and I'd like to get an AEG that's at least a reasonably aesthetic match for the dryer.

You seem to have an amazing ability to get a bargain - I paid twice that for mine!

Snap - I recently bought one of those as my main machine. I've done the pressure reduction and Rancilio Silvia steam wand mods. Just need a better grinder now. Presently looking at one of these (combination of grind quality, compact size, and aesthetic acceptability). While I very much enjoy drinking coffee, I actually get as much enjoyment out of the ritual of making it. And the look on people's faces when you give them something better than most chain coffee shops can manage is worth the price of admission alone. My latte art sucks though. Yes, the original patents started expiring a few years ago. There's been some interesting litigation over the years, but it's clear that the pods themselves are now completely unencumbered. My brother in law lent us his machine during the build. I tried various generic pods (not Lidl, unfortunately) but they were all absolutely disgusting. Plus the pods themselves don't have much coffee in them, so I usually ended up doubling up every time I made a coffee. It made for an expensive habit!

I didn't even bother checking the price, but that's more than I expected. The problem I have with a lot of high-end espresso machines (even the domestic ones) is that they aren't designed to be turned on briefly, then turned off once you've made your coffee. Most want at least 30 mins, if not 60 mins, heat-up time. I just can't be bothered with wasting that much time and energy just to make a coffee. My next purchase is a decent grinder. I presently use a hand grinder, which is okay for the Aeropress, but not for espresso.

They're lovely. My wife wanted me to buy one of the full size commercial Elektras, but I really don't need a large hot pressure vessel of that size in my house!

The only assumptions that went into ours were a couple of junctions where worst case, rather than actual, values were used. I doubt it made much difference to the final number. The assessor did say that we had the highest EPC he'd ever calculated, which was nice. I got the feeling he does a lot of stuff for developers though, so perhaps that result isn't so surprising! No idea - certainly not that I've ever heard of.

I spend most of my time in the cheap seats. Coffee is one of the few areas I'm willing to pay a bit more.

If it's for an as-built SAP, that's a more than reasonable price. It's so low that I'd be making sure everything will be done properly. For example, what happens if you don't reach the required numbers on the first run through? Is there a surcharge for each round of recalculation? I paid quite a bit more to get ours done, because we had a lot of "odd" (according to most SAP assessors!) features on our house (PV, waste water heat recovery, triple glazing, unusual twin-stud construction technique, etc). I'm sure I could have had it cheaper, but they'd have cut corners and made a lot of assumptions. Having spent a lot of time and effort trying to reduce the amount of energy we used, I wanted to get a SAP assessment that took all of that into account and gave us a nice high number!

No, but I'm also not an autocannibalist.

So this is interesting. I gave the product one star, and provided a detailed basis for my score along the lines of what I wrote above. I've just received an email from John Lewis with the following: "Thank you for your recent product review. Your feedback is very important to us, but we're sorry that we had to reject your review on this occasion and won't be posting it on johnlewis.com. We do take safety issues very seriously, and our Customer Services team will be in touch with you on this matter if you haven't already contacted us by other means.Thank you for taking the time to write a review, Customer Reviews teamJohn Lewis" John Lewis is the last company I'd expect to reject (ie, censor) negative reviews!

Ours is inside - the main supply comes up through the slab in our plant room. Our DNO (SSE) moved it there without question. If they admit that they're "reluctant", then they admit that they'll do it. If they could stop you, you can be sure they'd say so!

As long as what is supplied is properly expressed on the invoice, I suspect it doesn't matter. What you don't want in either case is an item saying "hire of concrete pump". We were advised (far too late, unfortunately) that a telehandler and operator for our window installation should have been zero-rated.

I actually started writing something the weekend before last about coffee, but we were away on the Isle of Wight, and reception was spotty so I gave up. I use an Aeropress most days at home. Amazing bit of kit, but a bit of a learning curve for people unfamiliar with them. I think a decent cafetiere is very worthwhile though. My wife laughed at me when we unpacked the car on the Isle of Wight last weekend and I pulled this out of the boot: As usual, lots of laughing at me about the efforts I make to ensure we have decent coffee when we travel, but no shame about accepting the resultant lattes! (Just to be clear, I only brought the La Pavoni to steam milk. I did the coffee in the Aeropress.)

The issue here, as I understand it, is that having the pumping company supply may not work. The question is therefore whether it's possible to have the pump supplied separately and still zero rate it. @Vijay, is there any reason the concrete company can't just hire the pump themselves (using the pump people you've spoken to) and roll up the cost into their invoice?

On pots and pans for induction, we bought this set from John Lewis just over a year ago. I've just written a review (which may not appear for a bit apparently) on the JL website, but short version is that the exposed aluminium along the top edge of all the saucepans appears to have eroded, possibly due to the dishwasher. The result is a pair of thin stainless steel edges sticking up. The inner one is very thin, so is very sharp - so sharp that it cleanly sliced off a layer of skin the other night while I was wiping it out! It's out of stock online at the moment, but I'd caution against buying this set in-store or if it becomes available online again.

Is the way around this to characterise the situation on the invoice as paying a company to pump concrete? You then aren't hiring anything - they are using their own plant to perform a building service as contracted.

Did you see this thread: Your problem might be something similar. We have the same problem with some corn bulbs (a term I hadn't seen before!) in our hallway, which I hope, one day, to get around to looking at.