"I paid by PayPal and a few hours later received an email stating I had been blocked due to a number of possible reasons, none of which were valid or applicable to me. It asked for proof of the PayPal transactions, one option being a screenshot of the PayPal confirmation email, which I sent.

24 hours later, I was contacted by email, and told was I still blocked, tht the proof provided was not adequate, despite it being exactly what they requested and asked for a utility bill with proof address. I requested cancellation of the order."

"Worst experience ever! Don't bother ordering from this site if you want something! Said the product was in stock for immediate dispatch until I got an email saying the product was out of stock and they would not be getting any more so I had to order another pair from another site! Woeful goodwill gesture of free delivery if I order a replacement.. What about the next day delivery I have already paid for???!! Didn't even reply to my email, such poor customer service..."

"Having bought a pair of £150 premium football boots i certainly did not expect them to start falling apart after a few uses! Having been rejected any type of refund or replacement despite sending proof photos to them i was not impressed. To make matters even worse i was told something quite remarkable by the nice customer service representative, the boots were sold 'Just for show purposes' despite not stating this anywhere on the product page and instead listing how 'comfortable the boots are on the feet' and how they are 'great for striking the ball'. So that would mean BLATANT FALSE ADVERTISEMENT on their part then!!

Safe to say i am not very happy and feel people need to be made aware of this before purchasing products from this (dare i say) fraudulent company, i certainly won't be purchasing my yearly football boots from these anymore."

"‪@prodirectsoccer .... @nikestore @nikefootball disgusting treatment !!! My son saved for a £230.00 pair of Nike mercurial superfly-sg-pro urban black Lilac. Which are faulty !!!! Both pro-direct and Nike won't replace them 5. Weeks he had them not got back to me nike manager and pro direct both blaming each other!! It's wrong!!! "

"Hello,
I wrote a review about bad customer service of Pro Direct Tennis on Trustpilot and they contacted me ofering a solution to refund the money I lost , or buy online from them with the same value of the refund + free shipping, they called me then sent me four e-mails asking for a quick solution, I replied twice and still waiting for the solution since two weeks!!.....I don't know why Prodirect are destroying their image this way, they really don't care about customer opinion or satisfaction, their strategy is to reply without any serious or useful solution and this is a fake business, what a shame!!
Philippe."

"Pro-direct op prijs en assortiment geselecteerd. De uitgekozen keepershandschoenen laten personaliseren.
Bij ontvangst bleek de afgedrukte naam er beschadigd op te zitten en bleken de handschoenen geen fingersave te hebben, wat wel in de webshop genoemd stond.
Handschoenen netjes ingepakt en retour gezonden met ingevuld retourformulier. De retourzending bleek uit de track&trace historie geweigerd te zijn bij de deur en is daarna terug gekomen. Zeer slechte afhandeling!"

"I ordered a pair of football boots from them and paid by direct debit in full.
They emailed me cancelling my order in view of security concerns and because of previous order history and wanted me to send additional information including copy bank statement and copy credit card or to pay them again by bank transfer to a specified account.
I have never ordered anything from them before and had paid in full by direct debit, so I rang customer services as I thought it was a scam but they said they definitely required the information.
I am not prepared to send such information by the unsecured medium of email nor am I prepared to pay twice .
Notwithstanding that they have cancelled my order even though I've paid upfront, I'm still waiting for my refund.
I can't order anymore boots until I get a refund as I haven't got the money and they were intended as a Christmas present, so if I don't get the refund soon I won't be able to order another pair elsewhere in time for Xmas.

I'm very upset and will never order anything ever again from prodirectsports and will tell all my friends about the way I've been treated"

"Abysmal Service,
Ordered a pair of Adidas world cup rugby boots, paid the full amount as well as extra for the express shipping. To date the boots have not been delivered, the delivery company refuses to contact me and the customer service unit has been terrible. Even after I demanded my money back they attempted to dodge the question and assure me that my boots would be delivered soon. I would strongly discourage any one from buying from this shop, instead go for one of their competitors (Lovell, Maybe?). At this stage I have taken my complaint to VISA."

"Don't ever buy anything from this place they are the worst. I ordered a srum cap a month and a half ago and Just recive it."

"I have steam coming from my ears after speaking to the returns department/manager of Pro Direct Sports. I ordered a Michael Clarke Spartan 4000 cricket bat for son for Christmas. It arrived looking splendid and in plenty of time for Christmas, which was brilliant. That's where the niceties stop I'm afraid.

As it was Christmas and cricket is a summer sport my son had no need to use the bat until he went to the County academy in January. A week before training I e-mailed Pro Direct to ask if the bat was "Fully Knocked in" or "Partially knocked in" because it came fitted with a face protector on it so I could not oil the face unless I removed the face protector and I did not want to damage the protector if the bat had already been knocked in prior to the protector going on.

I did not receive a reply so I knocked in the bat regardless and oiled what wood was exposed. On the very first training session the bat was collapsed on one of the edges and as you can imagine my son was devastated.

I called Pro Direct and was met with a call handler who said it sounded like the bat was faulty and to send it back. Which I did at a cost of £9. I was then told a week later that the damage was only surface cracks, which you could clearly see it wasn't. I spoke to the manager who said she would have to stick by the manager in the returns department.

On receiving the bat back I managed to repair the damaged area but had to remove the stickers in order to do so. It took several days to repair and finally re-oil it.

But just last week my son went training with the full County squad and came home a damaged bat again, the old damage had now come away completely leaving a chunk missing from the side.

I again spoke to Pro Direct who after some heated discussions agreed for me to send the bat back to them again at a cost to me. I am not hopeful of getting my money back but I do not want the piece of rubbish back.

This item was on sale and I thought it was too good to be true. They do say you get what you pay for. This is a £150 bat and to be honest I would pay Pro Direct £1.50 for it.

So do yourself a favour DO NOT BUT ANYTHING FROM PRO DIRECT."

"Ordered an Adidas scrum cap for my son, it wasn't discounted (on sale) but at a decent price compared to elsewhere. As it wasn't required urgently, used standard delivery.
Product arrived when expected and in excellent condition. No issues and would happily use the website again."

"Absolutely awful customer service.

I order a product, which was shown in stock on the website. When I was expecting to receive the order, I was emailed to tell me that it was no longer in stock. I asked to cancel the order and this was confirmed by email. It was very surprising when, over a month later, the parcel (now too late for what it was ordered for) arrived on my doorstep and the money was taken from my account without permission. After making a complaint, collection of the parcel was arranged and I was told I would receive a full refund. I am still waiting for the refund, long after it was promised, and now they are suggesting that they won't refund the postage. They are only contactable via email or a premium rate number. Absolutely ridiculous! "

"Very poor delivery, stroppy customer service, as other people have mentioned. A bargin is only a bargin, IF you get your stuff. GO TO THE SHOPS its easier."

"Slow delivery, no response to e-mails and poor customer service attitude. Happened more than once now so....
...NEVER AGAIN!!"

"For the TL;DR crowd: solid service, good prices and incredibly decent worldwide shipping rates, but pre-sales could use some work.

As a Scot "stuck" in Honolulu, getting a hold of stuff that I could buy at a million and one shops back home can prove to be tricky. The internet increasingly makes items more accessible, but often at a price.

With the conclusion of this year's Six Nations (with Scotland narrowly avoiding the wooden spoon in the same way they've done since 2007) I figured it might be a good time to try to pick up a couple of rugby shirts. Back home they typically are marked down on sale after the tournament is done, but I didn't rate my chances at getting anything at a reasonable cost from nearly 9000 miles away. Nevertheless, I hit google in the hope of turning something up.

The first thing I found were a bunch of online stores based in the U.S. that import jerseys. They typically wanted the better part of $100 plus shipping (often with fairly unreasonable rates to Hawai'i) however, which made them last-resort possibilities, so I kept looking.

I had a peek at the Scottish Rugby Union's online shop. It's operated by Greaves Sports, and I can easily visualise their shop in Sauchiehall street in Glasgow, but their worldwide shipping is expensive, which would have negated any savings from sale prices.

I finally discovered Pro Direct, but I don't remember the part I took to get there. As well as their home site, they also operate Pro Direct Rugby (http://www.prodirectrugby.com/ which is where I originally landed) Soccer, Tennis and so forth.

Browsing to their Scotland section, I found that (like most other UK retailers) they were having a sale, and a decent one at that (40% off). On top of that, their actual prices for overseas customers are lower still as they don't collect VAT, which is now a mind-blowing 20%.

Despite the sale, they had pretty decent stock (unlike the SRU store) Their worldwide shipping rates also looked very reasonable, and were actually lower than what the U.S. stores wanted to move the same merchandise a fraction of the distance.

Things were looking up, but I needed to sort out sizing. The last shirt I bought was some 7-8 years ago, and I wanted to make sure that the manufacturer's sizing hadn't changed since then. I couldn't find a sizing chart on their site, so I emailed their customer service department for clarification. It took them the better part of 6 days to reply, by which time I'd seriously considered not bothering with the whole thing.

Thankfully, patience paid off. Based on their advice, I submitted an order for a couple of shirts. A confirmation email arrived promptly, and was followed up about 1 day later with a shipping notification, which was a nice touch. Their shipping department definitely appears to be much more on the ball than sales.

No tracking was available during transit as the package was shipped by post, but it arrived on my doorstep (signature required) 11 days later, which is pretty typical for mail between the UK and here. Their advice on sizing was spot-on, so full marks to them for that.

All in all, I'm quite chuffed at the way the order went. I got two new rugby shirts shipped halfway round the world, ultimately for the same price as buying a single jersey from one of the various U.S. sellers. Given that sort of savings, the earlier communications delay doesn't seem so important.

"