A1 Horsebox Hire

Avoid like the plague. Poor quality and frankly unsafe, deathtrap of a lorry, and worst customer service I have ever had to deal with in my life.TL;DR (full review below) - lorry unsafe, ended up concussed and in A&E due to flimsy door catches failing when a small gust of wind hit and swung the door into my head.Despite my partner ringing to inform them of the situation as soon as it had happened, we received no sympathy from company whatsoever, instead threatened to report me to the police for “stealing” the lorry if I didn’t return it by the hire deadline.FULL REVIEW - We’ll start with the box itself. It’s a basic 3.5 tonne box and it was ok to drive, but it has seen better days, and clearly lacked even just a prior basic check to ensure it’s actually safe for customers and their horses before they drive away.First of all, the middle partition does not stay fastened properly, which I was unfortunate enough to discover half way up the dual carriageway, when it came undone and was swinging and bumping into my young horse (who luckily was a complete saint and didn’t seem to mind). I had to pull over numerous times to refasten it, turning what should have been a simple 30 min journey into a stressful nearly 2 hours. Upon arriving at the venue, I even had a kind man offer to come and have a look to see if he could fasten it but he couldn’t do it either so it wasn’t due to me being unable/not strong enough etc. For the journey back I had to fashion a temporary fix out of bailing twine.Secondly there is no way to hook the partition so that it stays open whilst loading/unloading, this seems like a huge design flaw; it makes it practically impossible to load/unload if you’re alone, as even the slightest bit of wind just catches it like a sail and slams it shut on you/your horse. Cue the bailing twine fix again...Lastly, and worst of all are the clip fasteners on the top doors. These are supposed to ensure the doors don’t swing around but again (following the common theme of shoddy design/build quality) they failed to do their one job, actually resulting in a trip to A&E... I was closing up the lorry in preparation to return it, when a gust of wind completely broke one of the doors loose from its clip, swinging the sharp metal door directly into the side of my head, giving me mild concussion and severing the top of my ear. Despite the pain I’m glad it was me stood there and not my horse, I dread to think...Of course after this incident I was incapacitated and unable to drive the lorry back. At this point I still had a couple hours left on the hire, but unsure what to do, my partner rang A1 on my behalf to inform them of the situation, but instead of a bit of empathy and an attempt to find a solution, he was met with complete contempt and disregard for myself and my injury, their only priority was themselves and getting the box back in time. All they could come up with at first was to try and pressure my partner to drive it back himself, and when he explained he couldn’t because A) he needed to take me to A&E urgently and B) even if he could he wasn’t comfortable with it (never driven a lorry before and had nothing to do with the hire), we were absolutely dumbfounded because their response was to threaten us that if the lorry wasn’t returned by 6pm they’d be reporting it as “stolen” to the police! I have never been so stunned in disbelief in my life. Not a single ounce of compassion or just a simple “sorry to hear, let’s see what we can do”, just a complete lack of care or thought.Not really sure what else to write as speechless but this is one experience I thought I needed to get out there to alert people of this business’ clear lack of professionalism and due care for its customers. I would expect as standard such a business to have contingency in place for this sort of event but quite clearly they are inadequately equipped, both logistically and emotionally to deal with accidents or emergencies.So there we have it, my first and definitely my last experience with A1 Horsebox hire.