Gousto - www.gousto.co.uk

I followed the recipes very carefully but the meals were inedible. A really good idea in principle but the food was awful.

I recently saw this company on TV and thought it was a good idea.

Each week you choose what meals you'd like to cook. The following week, Gousto deliver the ingredients along with recipe cards. Everything is delivered in the quantities required which cuts down on food wastage. I looked at the website and thought it was rather expensive at £42 per week, as I am disabled and unable to work I found this too expensive.

I then found a deal to try out the service for half price. I thought this was a better deal for a week's worth of main meals so went ahead. After signing up and paying for the service I discovered that you only get to choose three meals per week (2 people per meal), this meant that all of the big price displays on the website stating value for money were for each person and not each meal. I had already had to pay by now so I continued and ordered my meals.

The box arrived today and while the food looks to be good quality, there isn't much of it. If I paid £21 on premium supermarket food, I would expect to see more for my money. I have yet to taste it as we won't start on the recipes until tomorrow.

After this slight disappointment I received an email feeling me not to forget to order for next week. I ignored this as I had only signed up for one week. As I was about to delete the email I noticed it said that if I didn't choose, they would deliver a random selection of recipes.

Worried about this, I logged on to find out if this was correct. I discovered to my horror that although I hadn't requested it, Gousto automatically set up an automatic weekly card payment of £42 unless I told them otherwise. By the time I realised this I had 2 hours to cancel before I was charged. I did this straight away and so was safe. I am worried though that if I had been working I would not have been able to cancel this in time.

To put the price in perspective, this service provides three dishes per week at £42. For £10 at my local supermarket I can get a whole meal including wine for 2 people AND I don't have to prepare it.

To summarise, Gousto is expensive and initiates a weekly card payment scheme without telling you they are doing so. While the idea is nice, low food wastage, freshly prepared etc; it costs £14 per dish which is not good value for money.