B&Q Ruined My Wedding, Cost Us Thousands, Damaged My Husbands Health But Don't Care

I'm 21 and totally blind and care for my sick husband who due to genetic abnormalities is nearly blind, has chronic pancreatitis, diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, peripheral neuropathy and a host of other problems meaning he has to take dozens of pills just to keep him going. In the last few years he's lost over 60% of his body weight. Life can be hard at times but we have each other and that's what counts.

Last year we realised we needed a more suitable home as my husband (we weren't married at that point) was no longer able to climb into the bath and stand in the shower. Our kitchen wasn't large enough to allow me to cook safely and also we wanted a home we could call our own having had to rent in the expensive private sector for all of our adult lives. We applied for a council house and it was a struggle to get a suitable property but eventually we were given a house that had the potential to be suitable. It had a walk-in shower and just needed a new kitchen as the council one was around 30 years old and very shabby including nails sticking out etc. The layout was also completely unsafe and did not provide space for modern appliances. When you're blind you can't nip out to the supermarket in your car every day so it helps to have a freezer.

As the January sales were coming up we thought it would be the perfect time to get a new kitchen. We used all of our savings and borrowed the rest from my husbands Mum who had recently been widowed. We had a disastrous quote from Moben which involved them not listening at all to what we wanted and designing the kitchen they wanted. They then put lots of pressure on us to commit there and then when we'd said on the phone we weren't ready to order that day. They said that the price on offer was only available that day and did the usual phone-call to check with the superiors if the 'free' dishwasher offer was still available... what? only one left? There's a surprise. In the end we gave a small deposit just to get rid of them.

Next we called in B&Q. Their sales representative Dave seemed to know what he was doing much better than Moben. He listened to what we wanted as my husband already knew exactly what layout he wanted. Dave was able to translate this down into proper plans and included everything we wanted where we wanted. He made it perfectly clear that the quote was valid for a month so we could think it over and didn't have to commit their and then. It was a sale and we were really pleased with the kitchen and were delighted when we were told it'd only cost a little over £3000. Then came the bad news... the installation would cost a further £3500. As we were pleased with the kitchen design and how the salesman had conducted himself we decided we would go for it and decided we would go with B&Q installation for 'peace of mind'. Because my husband has high blood pressure and is in constant pain due to his various complaints the most important thing to us is a peaceful life. We could have got someone else to fit the kitchen for £2000 or so but we were prepared to pay that extra £1500 just to know that B&Q would look after everything... that they would come and fit it when they said they would... that we would be looked after... that we would have some comeback. Peace of mind is expensive, but can be worth it.

We then had the bad news that installation couldn't begin until mid-April. We thought about it, thought about the extra rent that would mean we'd have to incur but decided if we had to do it, then we had to do it. We were due to be married on the 14th of May and thought that it would be very romantic to have our new marital home ready for us to move in to straight after we were married.

Sadly, that's when the fairytale came to a sudden and shattering stop.

We lived several miles from our new house. Our only means of transport was taxi. We were told when the delivery of every item for our kitchen would arrive and we got up early that morning and we got a taxi up to the house and sat in an empty house until the delivery arrived. We got another taxi home. The following Monday we got up early and got a taxi and went up and sat in a house with nothing other than kitchen bits until the installer arrived. I had been expecting a whole team because I imagined a kitchen as being a huge job which would take several men a whole week to do. How little I knew. If I'd known it would take a joiner 2 or 3 days, a couple hours from a plumber, a couple of hours from an electrician and a couple of hours from a tiler then I would have thought that £3500 was a vastly inflated sum of money.

We got a taxi home and got a phonecall from the installer informing us that on his unpacking inspection various parts of our kitchen had arrived damaged so he would need to order more and it could delay the kitchen being finished until the end of the week as it'd take a couple of days for them to be delivered. I accepted these things can happen and thought little more of it.

The next 24 weeks; 168 days; 4,032 hours; 241,920 minutes; 14,515,200 seconds are a little bit of a blur to me. They say that when somebody has suffered trauma their mind can blank out the pain. We haven't recorded every phone call, saved every bit of correspondence, collected receipts for every taxi journey so that we can present it to B&Q or the courts... we never expected that things would end up like they did. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

In short we had to make literally hundreds of phone calls to B&Q, we had to hang on the line for hours. We had to make dozens of taxi journeys and wait in an empty house on dozens of occassions for deliveries to arrive, to not arrive, to arrive and be wrong (yes, were sent four rolls of the wrong edging tape... we got white marble doors instead of cherry modern), if a mistake could be made then B&Q made that mistake. One day we got a phone call out of the blue from a gruff sounding man informing me he had a breakfast bar and double oven for me. I told him we weren't at that house as we weren't expecting a delivery. He suggested he leave it with a neighbour... a 3 metre breakfast bar and a double oven!!!

Then comes our wedding, the happiest day of our lives. Every detail planned and every aspect perfect but for the fact we couldn't go on a honeymoon because firstly we had to be around for the kitchen to be completed (we didn't know at that point it'd take another four or five months) and also we couldn't afford it due to the extra costs B&Q had made us incur. Also, we couldn't relax all day as we had the worry of our kitchen disaster on our minds the whole time. We weren't able to move into our new marital home, we had to stay put and pay rent and pay for more taxi journeys and spend more hours on the phone.

This has cost us thousands, robbed us of our time, robbed us of a happy wedding and honeymoon and robbed my husband of his health.

B&Q took our money up front and then felt under no pressure to complete the work.

Obviously we wrote a letter of complaints to B&Q and today we received a phonecall from B&Q who told my husband we had been 'awarded' £380.60 compensation for the 'delays'. We felt like that was an absolute slap in the face as it's a fraction of the costs that we've incurred and no amount of money can compensate for the damage B&Q have done to our lives. If you know any other vulnerable people then whatever you do don't allow B&Q to prey on them and take their money and give false promises that they can have 'peace of mind'... they can't.

I just need to know what the next steps are that I should take with B&Q. I want to make everyone aware of how they treat customers.

Lizzie