Wickes bathroom

JadeHighland

RaRaDisAppointrd said:

ambles said:

I'm hoping to get my bathroom refitted this year and have had a quote from Wickes which was lower than I was expecting.
Has anyone here had their bathroom done by Wickes? What was your experience?
I'm getting some quotes from local tradesmen to compare as well.

Terrible experience- over a month without a loo, endless delivery problems (damage or wrong items), waterproof wall boards not joined together enough, leak in shower base seal 1 month after completion & an installer who hassled me by text after I complained to Wickes. Absolutely rubbish service. Go local professional 

Did you have to pay Wickes up front? What happened in regards to the finance side of things and getting everything fixed? 

jimmy_g

We got a kitchen and bathroom from Wickes, installed by their sub-contractors.  It transpired that the in-store designer had made various errors including missed elements off the designs and specified a glass screen approx half the size we had asked for, for our walk in shower (which meant water spraying out onto the floor).

Their installers were incompetent.  Big lists of faults on both rooms.  A couple of examples: they couldn't cut a solid oak worktop, so a corner had a chunk taken out of it; they couldn't even run a line of sealant, so in the shower it went from thin to thick, waving in and out and in places wasn't sealed up to the wall.

The installers weren't interested in putting things right.

Wickes told me their regional installation manager had to come and look at it.  It took months for him to respond to my phone calls.  He eventually sent another installer who agreed with us that it was dreadful.  But Wickes didn't show any interest in putting things right.

Whichever firm you go with, if you use the finance option, you can get them involved in putting pressure on the firm to resolve it.  Do not agree that the work is complete if you are not happy that it has been completed to a professional standard.

Still reading?  Well, remember I said that they had sent another installer to look at the poor first attempt?  After another few months, and us getting the finance company involved, Wickes eventually got that installer to come and take it all out and start again.  He did a really good job.

But the stress of living with a bodged kitchen and bathroom which we had paid a load of money for and were going to be paying off for the next 3 years or whatever, and the stress and infuriation of being ignored by Wickes, was something I would never want to go through again and would not wish upon anyone.

I have since found a Facebook group with lots of members who have had the same experience.  Dodgy installers and no interest from Wickes in putting things right.

Short answer - DO NOT BUY A KITCHEN OR BATHROOM FROM WICKES.  (And if, for some reason, you've fallen in love with their products - find your own installers)

Ishtar

I realise this thread has been quiet for a while, but I wanted to add a little of my story here.

4 years ago we had a kitchen supplied and installed by Wickes - it's perfect.  Even now, 4 years on there are no problems at all.

So, we decided to have our bathroom done.  We'd put up with the old one for 10 years - it was a bodge job and we had many problems that needed solving.

Anyhow, we went to Wickes.  The bathroom is less than 18 months old and has failed spectacularly.  The showerboards were not installed correctly, have leaked and blown, and are ruined.  The shower leaked into the room below just before Christmas last year...not just a small leak either, someone could have taken a shower downstairs as well.  Many other problems exist.  

We contacted the installer who took over a week to get back to us to sort the shower leak.  We had him back again to put more sealent around the bathroom (where he'd missed it).  For several reasons we have now lost confidence in him.

Currently chasing Wickes customer service who said 2 weeks ago they would pass our complaint onto the Installations manager (this is the guy who promised our bathroom would never leak again) - we haven't heard a thing.

Next stop is the finance company.

My advice is not to have a bathroom through Wickes - and proceed with caution if you decide to have a kitchen installed with them.  We were lucky that we had a great team for the kitchen.