B&Q and the leaky bathroom
Post categories: coming up on X-Ray,Ìýhome,Ìýmoney,Ìýstories
| 16:29 UK time, Friday, 19 March 2010
Faced with the prospect of spending several thousand pounds on having a new bathroom fitted in your home, you might think it safer to get the job done professionally by a big name firm.
But, as X-Ray viewer Hannah Bettiss from Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, discovered, that is not always the case.
Last year Hannah, a 26-year-old radiographer, decided to throw out her old leaky bath and treat herself to a brand new bathroom.
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Hannah Bettiss shows Rachel Treadaway-Williams her problem bathroom
But after her new B&Q suite was bought and installed at a cost of £3,000 altogether, Hannah immediately realised that all was not right. "My shower was leaking from the offset," she said. "I was back and forth to B&Q for a couple of weeks trying to get it sorted."
She took the firm's advice to adjust a seal, and then contacted her fitter who also tweaked the seal himself, but after taking a shower Hannah found water leaking through the ceiling of her sitting room downstairs.
When B&Q came to assess the damage she was told that in addition to fixing the shower, fitters would need to come back to replace tiles, paint the bathroom, plaster holes and refit the bath.
The firm assured her they would put their best fitters on the job and get her problems solved. But four months later Hannah's shower was still leaking. After finally losing faith in B&Q, Hannah wanted to hire another plasterer to mend her ceiling but B&Q refused to meet the cost.
"Truthfully I wish I had never had the bathroom done," said Hannah. "It will never feel like a nice new bathroom. It's the disaster bathroom that caused me stress and hassle for four or five months."
Happily, when faced with her nightmare Hannah did everything by the book. She filed all her correspondence with B&Q, kept a diary of all the problems and her communications with the firm, and took photographs at each stage.
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And when X-Ray contacted B&Q on her behalf, a spokesman told the programme: "We are sorry to hear about Miss Bettiss' experience, this is not our usual standard of service.
"We are doing everything we can to put this right as quickly as possible and we will of course reimburse her for all expenses and the inconvenience caused."
If you should find yourself unhappy with improvement work carried out on your property, click here to read X-Ray's step-by-step guide on how to resolve the issue.
Comment number 1.
At 29th Apr 2010, HarryChattaway wrote:Ha! This confirms my suspicions! You can't get one of the big companies to carry out a decent job, you're best off buying from an online shop and then getting someone else to install it for you.
That's shocking, I hope they do reimburse her, are you going to do a follow up?
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Comment number 2.
At 15th Sep 2010, Vicky wrote:We have had the same problems with B&Q. Its now been 16 months and we are still having problems with our bathroom that they fitted.We are trying to get some of our money back as we did not get the fitting service that we were sold. If anyone can help please contact us.Don't get them to fit anything in your house they don't live up to what they print in their brochures!!! Our house has been damaged and they won't sort it out.Do not trust them!
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Comment number 3.
At 8th Feb 2011, Mary wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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