Swell UK Ltd Reviews 

I ordered a vivarium setup and food/accessories. It was supposed to be express delivery but I has ordered over Easter so expected a slight delay. I didn’t receive order confirmation so had to ring up and chase the order. The man on the phone was lovely,apologised for the delay and agreed to send next day delivery, which was great.

Only 2 parcels arrived. The vivarium wood was chipped in places. A week later and still no sign of the third.parcel..very slow response times, no idea when it will arrive.

I am having to buy another UV light from a reptile shop in Blackpool as my son is collecting his dragon tomorrow and we need everything in place.

Very disappointed and won’t be purchasing from here again. Hoping I at least get a refund for the missing UV light.

I am done using this company sadly .
Emailed them on the 9th April with some questions regarding one of their aquariums , No reply . So the following day (10th April) I decided to just buy it & I paid for next day delivery at £5.99 . I needed this tank urgently! All was fine, tank got dispatched the same day etc . Saturday 11th April the Yodel tracking was telling me it won’t be delivered that day . After multiple calls to Yodel whose call centre must be in India I was told they don’t deliver to businesses on weekends .. eh ? I don’t own a business nor do I live at one . Finally my tank gets delivered on the Monday 13th April . So why did I even bother paying the extra £5.99 for something I could have gotten for free had I known the next day delivery wasn’t going to be fulfilled, thankfully I finally got an email back 4 days after I’d sent it with some BS excuse as to why my tank was late , their phone lines on Monday 13th when I’d tried to contact them were apparently off due to staff training 🙄 I’ve now had them refund me for the delivery cost I’d paid . I’d purchased some pond liner with underlay a week or two prior to this which took them absolutely ages to dispatch , imagine my horror when I find it just dumped on my doorstep ( value of almost £300) because the courier couldn’t even be bothered to knock .

They make their business look worse by using these cheap nasty courier companies ( Yodel & FedEx ) . Every time I’ve ordered from Swell the delivery NEVER shows up when it says it will due to these incompetent courier services they use . When will they learn ? After reading these reviews I’m absolutely dreading using the pond liner now incase there’s an issue with it that isn’t easy to spot . I definitely won’t be using them again .

Absolutely totally useless customer service it's impossible to speak to an agent. Ordered and paid tracked sent royal mail tracking tracking has frozen for 24 hours and no movement tried calling Swell they just hide behind sorry high calls they Never respond. Now trying to get refund for no delivery would not recommend that any one uses this company they are completely untrustworthy

As predicted STILL waiting on a refund despite sending the item back weeks ago. No update. No communication. Have sent several messages and nothing. DO NOT USE

Very poor experience with Swell UK, and I would honestly warn other people to think twice before ordering from them. My aquarium arrived damaged, with the bottom glass cracked across the base, so it was completely unsafe and unusable. I also saw the delivery driver handling the parcel roughly when bringing it in, which I believe contributed to the damage.

What made it worse was the packaging. For such a fragile item, the aquarium was packed with paper only, which was clearly nowhere near enough protection for delivery. It showed a real lack of care and common sense. I genuinely could not believe that something as fragile as an aquarium had been packed like that.

The communication was also horrible. Replies often took 2 to 3 days, and messages were usually sent late in the evening, which only dragged the whole situation out even more. On top of that, the information I was given was inconsistent. First I was told one thing, then later something else. A courier collection was arranged, I stayed at home waiting all day, and nobody came.

In the end, I had to deal with extra hassle myself. One drop-off point refused the parcel because it was too big, then at another one I was told I had to print the label. I do not have a printer, so I had to go elsewhere and pay to get it printed. All of this was for a problem that was not my fault in the first place.

Yes, I eventually got my refund, but only after a lot of stress, inconvenience and wasted time. I was actually hopeful about using Swell UK again in the future, but after this experience I definitely will not buy from them again.

For comparison, I later bought the exact same aquarium from Complete Aquatics, and it arrived quickly and was incredibly well protected inside to prevent damage. That just made it even clearer how badly this order from Swell UK had been packed and handled.

Very disappointing service overall, and I would not recommend them.

I order something I needed urgently on the Wednesday and paid the £5.99 for next day delivery as on their website and was not sent, I emailed customer service 3 times and on the 3 email requested for this to be cancelled and no reply. It was eventually sent on the Friday and when I checked the tracking on Friday night Yodel have not received the parcel, so it looks like it will be a week before I'm going to receive the parcel.
This is not the first time this has happened to me dealing with Swell so I advise anyone who is thinking of buying from this company to look else where.

Absolutely shocking. My tank is under warranty and it started leaking. A trail of 18 emails followed asking dozens of questions, including did I check the silicone when the tank was delivered (what???) and asking me to lift the tank up and put kitchen towel underneath. Superman wasn’t available. They don’t read your emails properly and just ask the same thing over again, maybe phrased a little differently.
Their conclusion was that as I had tried to repair the tank before contacting them the warranty didn’t apply. The leak began just before Easter and needed urgent attention. Their first response was four days after I contacted them, and then you get days of interrogation. My tank would have emptied itself several times over by then. It would seem one is expected to sit with your finger on the leak until they came up with a solution. They also tried to blame the fact that the tank overhung my work surface by 1cm, which doesn’t explain the silicone peeling in other areas.
In conclusion, they try to grind you down. My tank wasn’t expensive and came with the flimsiest, ugliest filter, not apparent in the marketing photos. If it had been more expensive I would have taken it further. The warranty is not worth anything, and it would appear customer services have been conditioned into not helping by pressing a button and asking a stream of futile and unbelievable questions. As previous reviewers have said, how this company stays afloat is mesmerising. Just don’t go there.

purchased a VivExotic Repti Home AAL Vivarium with Cabinet from Swell Reptiles in March and have been very disappointed.

The unit was assembled correctly on a level surface and initially seemed fine, but within a few days the cabinet became unstable and started buckling in the middle, causing the glass panels to go out of alignment and the entire base to come apart in various areas.

I provided clear evidence, with an extensive back and forth, but my claim was rejected as “assembly error” Despite clear photographs being sent. Given the price and purpose of the product, I expected far better quality and support.

Terrible customer service, multiple communication ignored by company and cannot trust their next day delivery. Avoid at all costs!

I Ordered fluke solve medication for my goldfish and swell uk sent fluke solve plus which resulted in losing three of my best fish, fluke solve plus can lead to fatalities in goldfish, informed swell uk, and thay apparently organised a courier to collect the product for a refund or replacement which failed to turn up. Not happy!

1 item sent broken. 2 items were totally missed off my order. It took me about 5 emails over the space of a week to get them to rectify the situation.

I ordered and paid for 2 discus , with postage £220. On the day of arrival only 1 fish turned up. It looked healthy and ok. I phoned swell uk to explain only 1 fish and was told that due to Iran they could not get the other fish so they would refund me. All ok. Next day another fish arrived, not the colour I ordered and very small for the money. It was floating upside down in the bag. I quickly opened it and floated it for an hour adding my tank water. It recovered slightly so I added to my tank to give it it's best chance. Next day it was covered in fir. I removed and flushed £100 down the toilet. Very poor quality fish. Avoid at all cost. No point calling customer care as they have no idea. Live and learn.

Do not order anything from them. I ordered a pond liner. It said I will get it delivered in 3-4 days. I ordered it on a Sunday but wasn’t dispatched until Thursday. So booked a weekend off work . Won’t be delivered until Tuesday now so waist of time.

So, I’m not one for leaving reviews, let alone bad ones, however when you have horrific experiences I think it only right to let others know and as I have seen in a lot of other reviews, most complaints seem to be aimed at customer service.
This also would have been a one star review if it wasn’t for certain staff helping as much as they could.
I have a filter that is under warranty and the UV decided to fill the canister housing the bulb with water. So I rang Swell and waited for 20 minutes to speak to customer services. Eventually spoke to Luke, who was pleasant and sorted a return out for me. I then sent the UV and all of its components back to Swell, Luke informed me that it would take up to 14 days to look at to repair or replace, I asked that it was replaced with it being water ingress on to an electrical area, he said he would try.
14 days pass and so I email and ring through out the following day with no response. The next day after 30 or so minutes I got through and spoke to Luke again, who now seemed to be not bothered and said it will be sent out when it’s ready.
To cut a very long story short, this then went on for another 2 weeks! Every day I sent emails, everyday I would sit on the phone waiting for 20 to 40 minutes for someone to answer and then being told another load of rubbish. During the second two weeks they did send out the UV kit and told me it was a new kit, however I have my suspicions that it was the same kit sent out with a new bulb, because as soon as I plugged it in again, it blew the electrics and the bulb enclosure had filled with water.
So again I sent it all back and after waiting on the phone again, 2 or 3 days later I managed to speak to a supervisor called Hannah, this after 2 attempts of asking to speak to the manager and being told they would call me back, which unsurprisingly they didn’t. Hannah was very apologetic and helpful and she got me a new set sent out that day, which I knew must have been new as the set I had head only been sent back on the same day.
The new set arrived, but the cylinder housing the UV was missing, so again, sat on the phone for around 30 minutes before eventually speaking, unfortunately, to Luke again. He proceeded to “sort something out”and said I would get an email informing me that it was in its way. I received nothing, so I emailed Luke, who sent me an email stating that it will get sent when it gets sent!
The next day, nothing again, so I ring and wait on the phone for another 30 minutes or so, but when the phone is answered this time, I demand to speak to the manager, Lisa, the manager, speaks with me, informs me after I have told her how appalled I am with the customer service and with how long this was all taking, that she had been brought in 4 weeks prior to literally deal with how awful customer service is, it clearly hasn’t always been like it but now in 2026 it is awful! Lisa then proceeds straight away to get the missing part sent out and it arrives with me the next day and thankfully! The UV is back up and running.
Because of Hannah and Lisa’s service my review is 2 stars, if it had just been off how Luke’s customer service was, it would have been 1 star.
So i thank you for reading my review and sadly for Swell UK I would not recommend them to anyone, ever and I will not be using them in the future for any purchases and would advise anyone looking to buy from them, to check out all the reviews and don’t take the “31000” Feefo reviews for granted before reading the latest few and the Google reviews and the Facebook reviews etc….
Steer clear and buy from somewhere else!

Bought a 20 litre tank, after a week the tank explored and ruined my floor, they replaced the tank eventually with no compensation for damage to my floor. I've had problems with the light now, reported it to them and still waiting over a month for replacement, now they want the broken light returned before issuing new light, i would not recommend the company to my worst enemy, they don't answer the phone and it takes them weeks to respond to emails, not happy with totally useless service

AVOID
I have been a previous customer so I am extremely shocked by the way this company has treated me. I placed an order £300 heard nothing, no tracking, contacted the company after a few days to be told it would be delivered on 27/03 nothing arrived I called again to be told by their courier it was out for delivery the next day Saturday 28/03 nothing arrived again. Why lie. They have lost my custom.

Swell UK Ltd - my experience. Order Oase Vitronic 55W UV cost £189.99
1. Saturday 20th March 2026 ordered and paid via Klarna

2. Wednesday 25th March 2026 order received - item was clearly second hand, not new and had been returned to Swell UK previously by a lady residing in Blackpool. I know this was returned to Swell UK by a lady living in Blackpool because a letter she sent to Swell UK with her return and her private details were still in the box she’d returned. The bulb tube cover was completely smashed, glass was everywhere within the box. I’d be sent a second hand damaged item sold as new for £189.99!

3. Wednesday 25th March 2026 after a 35 minute wait for the phone to be answered I spoke with Swell UK customer services. They asked me to send in a photo of the box and damaged item. I did whilst they waited on the phone. They apologised, asked me to destroy the other customers details and said they’d send a replacement glass bulb cover/tube out to me by priority and I’d receive it within 24 hours/48 hours at the outside.

4. I have heard nothing since 72 hours later - Saturday 28th March 2026. I tried to ring Swell UK, theres an answer machine they are closed until Monday.

5. Meanwhile my Koi are swimming in green water because of Swell UKs incompetence and very dodgy practice.

6. Reported Swell UK to Klarna, asked for a full refund and ordered another light from another provider.

7. I am writing to the lady in Blackpool to inform her how Swell Uk has failed to comply with the Data Protection Act and has no regard with protecting customers private information.

I have today purchased the damaged parts Swell UK sent me from another provider and so far am £39 out of pocket for this. Once the parts received Monday I’ll see by combining the new part and the used system Swell UK sent me whether I have a working UV system. Due to a lack of response from Swell UK on Monday I will also be reporting this to trading standards.

Swell UK possibly in all my 70 years, the very worst company I have ever dealt with!

Reading all the other reviews and looking at my experience , I’d say most of us agree, buy from Swell UK and you’re taking a massive risk of throwing away your money. Very, very poor indeed!

Abysmal service.

E-mailed in with some queries, after trying and failing to reach customer service via telephone.

Eventually received a reply to my e-mail days later, with a condescending attitude that didn't explain anything.

I was originally given a discount code (for a separate order that was messed up), this didn't work, but was explained away as not applying to some products on site (not sale, and not indicated at all on product page).

I want to like this company, they certainly seem to lead on lowest prices, but I'll order elsewhere and save the hassle until they maybe sort out their e-commerce business model down the line.

Ordered a bulb for my bearded dragon it came broken in 3 pieces then they would send another one fast delivery still didn’t come for another week and it came today BROKEN AGAIN they don’t have fragile on the box or anything and the bubble wrap is utterly pointless being in there

Item was delivered broken with fish pellets falling out of the box. Instead of sending an immediate replacement and collecting the broken box at the same time to minimize the inconvenience , they insisted on there return first and then took there time sending out a replacement . It took nearly a month to sort out and no reduction in the original cost . Their courier company spilt pellets over my drive when collecting the broken box and swell expected me to use my parcel tape to repair their broken box. Shocking customer service , arrogant and slow to respond .