Quintessentially Reviews 20

Very poor value, and an easy membership to regret.

The service felt slow, generic, and far less effective than the branding suggests. What is presented as elite lifestyle support often came across as ordinary admin with a luxury price tag.

My experience with Alexander Ayling was especially poor. I found the support unhelpful, uninspired, and lacking the judgment or initiative you would expect from a premium concierge service.

I am also uncomfortable giving money to this company after seeing reporting that co founder Aaron Simpson has faced rape accusations. Those are allegations, not findings, but they are still serious enough that I do not want to support the business financially.

Overall, overpriced, underwhelming, and not worth renewing.

I agree with all the 1 ratings. I bought this and meticulously followed the directions. never worked and I Am a chemist by background. they recommended that I then use their surfactant-another $50.00. followed the instructions after contacting one of their techs. nothing changed- crabgrass all over the place. when I asked for a refund I was told after alot of palaver to request it through their middle management company. all very clever. never saw a dime. unless you wish to spend money and time on a useless product, this is a buy of a lifetime.

Offered me five places for a restaurant I picked 1 and confirmed my time and telephone number a day later they came back to me and said they could not source a reservation at the the place they offered me
They then offered me 3 other places at terrible times of the day. Seems like a waste of of time.They don’t seem to have any sway in getting a table.
I have called my hotel and the front of house found me a table in top restaurant in 5 minutes all booked.

As a supplier to Quintessentially, we have always found all the team to be extremely helpful and professional. They go the extra mile for their clients and push for the best service quality on behalf of all their members - and treat their clients requests with importance so everyone has the VIP experience.

I cannot recommend Quintessentially highly enough! From the very first interaction, their commitment to excellence and personalized service was evident. What truly set my experience apart, however, was working with Harold Marcus, my dedicated concierge.

Harold was an absolute pleasure—professional, incredibly responsive, and always two steps ahead in anticipating my needs. Whether it was securing impossible-to-get reservations, curating exclusive experiences, or handling last-minute requests with ease, he delivered every single time. His warmth and attentiveness made every interaction seamless and enjoyable.

Thanks to Harold and the entire Quintessentially team, I’ve been able to enjoy a level of convenience and luxury that exceeded all expectations. If you're looking for a concierge service that truly understands the art of hospitality, look no further. Five stars all the way!

Still waiting for a 5000 refund from these guys. Unfortunately because they are a UK company I was told that I would not be able to sue them easily.

Basically they don't do your tasks (imagine waiting at the airport for a document they were supposed to fill out and missing your flight)maybe a ploy to get you to upgrade but instead i cut my losses and dumped 5k down the drain. If you have a personal assistant and they dont pay something on time you could lose thousands in fees and headache (isnt that the point of a personal assistant service?).
They offered no refund even after using the service for only two weeks out of a year.

Been a member since 2006; simply have been amazing and made my life easier, more fulfilling and enabled me to have some of the best experiences of my life! Great team, great help! Highly recommend!

Stephanie Allen is always so helpful, knowledgeable and professional. She investigated the option for us to do clay or cast in print for our newborn. She always delivers great suggestions. It is always a good range of suggestions so you always find what you are looking for.

I use Quintessentially mostly for restaurant and vacation booking and shows every now and then. Quintessentially organised my honeymoon and it was fabulous. The staff are usually responsive and efficient. The services are tailor-made and I am overall very satisfied with the level of client care.

They are great at suggesting amazing restaurants, trips and getting tickets to things that are sold out!

Absolutely abysmal service. Imagine being a concierge service and treating your customers as if they should be so privileged to pay for your service. Working with these clowns is literally akin to being in the Stanford experiment. They are the embodiment of Stockholm syndrome, woo’ing you with all the offers which make you feel so special but when you opt for it they do the ol’ switcheroo “oh sorry not available…but…our supplier has this for a 5x markup”. I could literally ticketmaster £75 tickets whilst they sold it to me for £500. The £20k they charge is literally paid to plugging the hole in their ailing balance sheet, which they have used to deploy an army of 21 yr olds with the IQ of an olive pit in a bid to woo unsuspecting finance bros. I wish I had four hands so I could give this circus four thumbs down.

I've been a member for more than ten years, and I recently came across some shocking reviews on this site. Instead of remaining neutral, I'd like to share my own experience if it helps anyone. While Quintessentially has room for improvement in several areas like pricing, technology, and after-office-hours service, the exceptional aspect lies in the way the service is delivered; a personalised service that almost every time predicts what you need when you need it. Each time I contact the team, they are happy to assist, regardless of the time of the day. The human connection is important to me, and it's something you truly experience here. Building friendships with other members outside of Quintessentially's events, for example, has been a rewarding experience over the years: good events, good networking. I find it remarkable. Call me old-fashioned, but there's nothing quite like the a traditional British-style service.Kind and caring individuals, offering great advice and care. Their classic (perhaps old-fashioned) approach may be why I've remained a member for so long, giving the service a charming, almost nostalgic vibe. It's just my perspective, and I hope it can help others too. If you're good at researching online and a bit perfectionistic, you might not need this membership. However, if you prefer saving time or relaxing while someone else handles a complex travel plan with “care”, then this is the service to choose.

So I received this as
a gift from a loved one . I was most interested in hard to secure restaurant reservations and some childcare last minute requests. Nothing that crazy. Their restaurant resys for “hard to get tables “ are just open table . They have no connections . My account
managers ( they rotated a bit ) never seemed like they actually went out anywhere . I asked for one job only . To get a res at NYC restaurant months in advance for two. They said it’s done. I double checked prior to showing up . They had no res just said we have space at the first come first serve bar . I
emailed my account manager saying
she literally ruined a bday that we FLEW IN FOR …. obviously no real explanation or worthy response .

Look , if you can spend ten minutes to sign up
for this garbage company you or a 10
year old can make your own
res on opentable or post a need for a baby sitter on care.com.

complete garbage

This is a work at home company so it says. Involves doing reviews of travel places. You are given a set amount of 40 to review per day, if you get a premium review you make more money...catch is you pay to do premium reviews and they say you get it all back when you complete your journey. You can get 1 to 3 premiums per day. I was a fool to continue on the second premium and paid $3000 then guess what hit the 3rd premium which my recruiter said wouldn't happen because I am new. Had to come up with almost $6000 more to complete that premium and finish the journey for the day. Therefore I did not have another $6000 available to continue, account frozen and banned and I lost my $3000 I put in. My recruiter, Sharon Hird, encouraged me to continue by saying I wouldn't get another premium, not to worry, and you will get your money back at the end of the day. I was stupid and should of listened to my gut feelings but I didn't. Not sure who has $9000 laying around to use to complete a journey in a day but if you don't, do not get involved with this scam of a company!!!!

Update - I have received the wine delivery as scheduled even though my previous two attempts to pay failed. I let them know and they confirmed that their HSBC issue has been fixed. Payment is made and it is all settled. It seems like they are just a bit disorganized. So I have amended my review and rating.

Previous review- I am based in Hong Kong and I am on the email list of Quintessentially Wine which is part of the Quintessentially Group. Quintessentially Wine shows that they have an office in Hong Kong.

I recently ordered some high rating and hard to get wine from them. As I have not ordered from them before, I would prefer to transfer money online instead of giving them my credit card details. The transfer was being rejected by HSBC and the reason was that their HSBC bank account was frozen. They chased me by email for the payment. I told them the problem. They said they asked HSBC to look into it and there was a mistake at HSBC. I told them I would mail them a cheque instead. The cheque was returned by the post office as they are no longer at the address shown on their invoice, email and website. If they have moved, they should have notified me in our email correspondence and one would expect them to indicate their new address on their invoice, email and website immediately as any normal business would.

Quintessentially has been extremely helpful. My lifestyle manager is responsive and very knowledgeable, not to mention a delight to work with. Access has been terrific. Planning my travel with them was the best decision I made this year.

For the purposes of clarification, my sister was a member for about 2 years (so no, Quintessentially, you will not have my name on your database). She asked me to write this review about our experience using this company.
It started off in a fairly promising way - exactly that - with a lot of promises from a sleazy and over friendly membership sales executive.
The service received had a lot to be desired.
There is a high staff turnover and the "lifestyle managers"were often incapable of fulfilling the most basic requests for tasks to be done without cocking something up.
A lot of the time, when you ask them to look into something or do some research for you, they palm you off on another company and expect you to pay them for said research or advice. They do surprisingly little themselves.
Whenever they purchased anything, they never appeared to have attempted to find a good price for the product/service.
It always ended up being far more aggravation, when they were involved in organising anything, compare to if my sister or I simply phoned up or booked it ourselves.
They also talk a lot about finding tables in fully booked restaurants - they never managed to do this for us. They simply said the restaurant was full and offered us options which weren't comparable and we therefore weren't interested in.
There really is no point in paying a company £5,000 or more a year to book restaurants for you - it appeared that they usually do so on OpenTable. We realised this when a restaurant did not have a reservation in our name and after a lot of embarrassment, the receptionist clarified that the lifestyle manager had booked it using her own OpenTable account.
You can't even get them to book flights at the best price - they just keep arguing with you and trying to insist on using "Quintessentially Travel," at a much higher price, until the flight you asked them to book sells out.
The talk of making the impossible happen is complete rubbish. They weren't even able to find a carpenter to make a box as a gift for someone, let alone anything more interesting than that. The "tickets for sold out events" are just expensive tickets like you could get yourself if you went on viagogo or a similar site.
To anyone thinking of joining for the "events" and to meet members and make friends, I honestly wouldn't bother. Most of the fellow members we met were either new and still enthusiastic, or had been with the service a while and were disenchanted, baffled as to what they were paying for and talking about leaving. One thing that irritated members beyond belief was whenever there was an "event," for example, a "private dinner" at a new restaurant for members, they were often outnumbered two to one by staff coming along and having a good time - which the members were of course paying for.
Like us, you many find that some of the "recommended suppliers" are just friends of people who work there.
My sister complained numerous times about how the service was sub standard. She was met with endless promises, but nothing improved.
As the events got fewer, were hosted in less glamorous locations and the canapés became scarce, my sister decided Quintessentially was on its way out and left. I'm really surprised it's still going. I believe they have corporate contracts - I don't know if this is why they are still in business.
Their founder, the insufferable Ben Elliot, was another of the reasons my sister no longer wanted to use this company.
We've had far more success and so much less hassle using the Amex concierge, OpenTable, laundry apps, the Ruuby beauty app, Skyscanner and Booking.com etc. I really don't recommend anyone wastes their money or time with this company. If our experience is anything to go by, your wallet will be a lot lighter and you will be beyond frustrated.

A company with shady politics trying to remove any bad reviews about them. Just google the controversies. And just take a close look at the number of reviews they have marked as defamatory and censored using the naiviety of Trustpilot. I think even that tells a story.

Only started using them - so far so good

I have never written a review before but feel compelled to let people know of the total incompetent experience I had over the course of one year with Quintessentially concierge service. It is by far the worst £5,000 I’ve ever spent in my life. For one year all I mostly heard in response to request was (unfortunately) To literally has something as simple as booking a restaurant on a weeknight!

I would call Quintessentially for example restaurant bookings tickets night club access flights etc. Basic things! Most of the time they would say they were unable to do what I wanted and give me a random alternative which was mostly not viable Out of frustration and embarrassment I would eventually get the job done myself. Ultimately wasting time and effort which is exactly what it supposed to do the opposite of.

I’m very serious when I’m saying if I had bought my 10-year-old Niece an iPhone and a laptop I feel she could have done by far a much more efficient thorough and competent Job than anyone I spoke to at the Quintessentially concierge service.