The bath store gave in

Charley1234

Hi all,
Just after xmas I went into the bath store because they had a 50% off sale (ye right). I got a quote for a whirlpool P shaped bath with screen, mixer shower and head, posh taps for both the bath and sink and vanity unit with built in sink and toilet. The price came out at £2200. I thought that was rather extortionate so started to look around. I went to the Betterbathrooms.com showroom where they gave me a quote for the same bunch of stuff. It came to £1480, which I thought was much more reasonable. Anyway I got a call from Bath store this Sunday asking if the quote was OK. I said it was uncompetitive so they asked me to pop in to review it. They looked at Betterbathrooms.com quote and spouted off about how their bathrooms were a better quality etc etc which I didn't believe for a second. They said they'd call me the next day. Amazingly enough they said they'd beat their price and give me the full package for £1400. Amazing how they can suddenly drop their price by £800 even when it's a 50% off sale !

Question is, should I go to betterbathrooms and ask them to beat the batstore quote and carry on playing them off or just take what I've been offered?

Anyones opinions welcomed please.

EssexHebridean

My own moral code would say that I should give the betterbathrooms lot a chance to beat the quote - even if they beat bathstore by a few ££'s I'd accept it as Bathstore clearly wanted to rip you off in the first place.

Jo_Mc_2

I'd also give betterbathrooms the chance to match the price. In fact I'd even pay them what they've already quoted, I couldn't give my money to the bath store knowing they'd tried to rip me off.

blueberrypie

Do you think they're right when they say their stuff is better quality? I think that's worth taking into account.

Do both quotes include the same things (delivery, installation, etc)?

joshtbh

You'd be mad to not go back to better bathrooms! good luck!

fififoofoo

good luck to you - nearly got ripped off myself with a 50% off sale for a bathroom - they wanted £12,500 for a fully installed bathroom - but couldn't plumb in a special radiator we wanted and wouldn't do the flooring. Needless to say it was Dolphin! - hey for the full price of £25k I could've got an extention to my house! (in the end got the whole lot for £6.5k) - happy shopping - and remember it's a buyers market!

JMG4321

We found Bathstore were flexible on price for us too (back in September). They offered us the current special offer (which was £200 of free accessories) and spoke to head office to let us have the discounted sale prices that were due to start in a couple of weeks so we ended up with two sets of deals. We have been pleased with their stuff but I can see your dilemma!

However, my sister tried to negotiate with Bathstore (and at the same shop as me) a couple of months previously as she was buying for three bathrooms/cloakrooms and they wouldn't give her any discounts whatsoever....

Also (no personal connection whatsoever!) but we found the accessories, and particularly the taps, chrome bottle traps etc, were good value and quality at plumbworld.co.uk and they also do cashback via the usual websites.

Hope the bathroom project goes well!

dmg24

blueberrypie wrote: »

Do you think they're right when they say their stuff is better quality? I think that's worth taking into account.

Do both quotes include the same things (delivery, installation, etc)?

I know an ex Bath Store manager. They use the same products that you will get from anywhere else, they will just be differently packaged. The reason they can cut their prices so much is because they are massively inflated in the first place. They seem to be turning into the Carpetright of bathrooms!

jamesel

This post possibly comes a bit too late, but we ordered from Better Bathrooms following this post and have had nothing but problems. Yes, they are cheaper, but once they have your order they don't want to know, which is a huge problem if half of the suite was either cracked or the taps didn't work properly, which was the case with us.

Getting through to their non-existent customer care department is virtually impossible, so my advice would be to use Better Bathrooms for comparative quotes, but never buy anything from them.