Kent Tea and Coffee Reviews 

I have been buying my tea and coffee exclusively from Kent & Sussex for almost 3 years now, and overall I am very impressed with them. They frequently have 15 and 20% off sales including free gifts, the prices are very reasonable, their loyalty points scheme is generous, and they have a great range of interesting teas and coffees. I particularly love their own blend Kentish Breakfast tea. There have been a small handful of issues over the years, but every time there has been a problem, it has been sorted quickly and efficiently by customer service. They are a small independent company, and can have some dispatch delays during busy periods, but nothing I found particularly troubling.

The tea is ok. Delivery takes almost a month! Where is it coming from? And at £3.99 p&p id be better off picking it up myself. Won't be buying anymore.

I have used the company successfully once and was happy with their tea.
When I ordered a second package of teas, one was Dandelion tea. After a while I noticed a small black object moving in the tea spoon. I spread the tea on a sheet of paper and discovered several small black bugs plus a couple of larger brown ones.
I managed to inform the company using an email link on their web site - like so many companies now they make it very difficult to contact them by any normal means.
I finally received a reply stating that they were distressed about the contamination and would inform their supplier. They stated they would repay the cost, although I would have been happy to have the tea replaced. This was in Aug/Sep 2021.
It is now Nov '21 and I have never received the repayment despite chasing them.
Any company can suffer problems. The true measure of their quality is how they respond to them. In this regard they have failed.

They have a good selection of goods and generally I liked them. However, their management appears to be completely braindead. Let me explain.

I placed a decent order couple of hundred of EUR worth, more than a month ago. Money were taken from my card right away, of course. Only silence for a few weeks. So I went to their website, sent them online ticket on their system basically saying "why have you still not shipped my order?".

A few more weeks passed. No response of any kind. Went to my bank online system to file for a chargeback, bank naturally asks for proof that I talked to merchant. Ok. Went to merchant's site to print out my ticket. Turned out they responded and requested me to call my bank and ask them for some number from the transaction and to give it to the merchant. This supposedly proves that I am not a fraud. And of course no email was sent to me that there is a response on the ticket.

A funny thing they did it the same way a few years ago with my order and at the time I told them to REDUCTED off, stop being REDACTED, and just ship the damn order and they did.

This is a direct quote

"
We apologise for any inconvenience caused and hope that you understand that we need to be cautious with orders like this but we need to ask you if you could let us have an authorisation code which consists of 6 numbers given by your bank for this particular transaction.
If you ring your bank they will give you a unique code for this transaction which only they will know and then once we have this information we can begin to process your order for you and dispatch as soon as possible.
"
Surely you can see how ridiculous it is in our day and age. If it was some number they included in description of the transaction that can be seen in online banking it would be annoying, but ok. Just needlessly wasted a few minutes of mine. But demanding calling banks, spending hours in phone queue, asking bank for some internal number on their systems. I am not buying a REDACTED Lamborghini here! IT IS UTTERLY INSANE!

Dear management of kent tea and cofee, if by any chance you read this, please stop being such REDACTED and realize that it is 21st century around already and your procedures are utterly insane! Decide already are you in business of selling tea or are you in business of wasting time of your customers and insulting them and fix your REDACTED. It is an embarrassment!

Only one star to an otherwise seemingly a decent company for wasting my time.

Are they just stupid or fraudulent? I do not know. You decide.

Edit:

So in the end they took my money, held it for more than a month, extended ridiculous and impossible or impractical to fulfil additional demands, refused to fulfill the order, only after receiving complains and threats of a chargeback issued a refund, inflicted material small damage in losses on related to refund double currency conversions, wasted lots of time.

Based on the above facts and in my opinion Kent Tea and Coffee is a fraud and is to be avoided at all cost.