Bathroom Store or Homebase for new bathroom?

[Neverme]

Looking to get a new bathroom fitted and the Bathroom store catalogue is very nice. But online reviews are awful! The other big chain near us is Homebase whose reviews are only slightly less vitriolic.

Have you had any good or bad experiences with either?

Don't mention B&Q to me, we are still traumatised by them in from last house bathroom/kitchen experiences ...

We have just had ours done with the Bath store (think that is different to bathroom store though???)
We are very pleased with the bathroom now it is done. The sub contractors who fit it took a while but app they were new to the bath store and "our feedback was valuable" - by that I got the impression it may be last time they are used! But have to say that we ar every happy with the finished bathroom.

We went with Bath Store too. Design service was fab, able to negotiate on price and our fitter uses them a lot and rates them. Really happy with the results. I'm sure I heard somewhere that they are franchises though so there may be service variations store to store.

We had some Bathstore taps which looked lovely but turned out to be utterly shit quality and had to be replaced just over a year later. Wouldn't ever recommend them.

Bathstore Glasgow.
Worst customer service of my life
Nice product.

Don't get those stupid press button to flush for the top of your cistern. Get proper leve

We got our new bathroom from Bath Store (had it fitted by builders, not Bath store people) and so far it's great.

The builder did complain a bit about the loo, as Bath store loos can be of a slightly different gauge to standard UK loos as they're made abroad but tbh the builder was a bit grumpy about everything in one way or another so have no idea if it's a valid grumble.

And I second the franchise idea - we have 2 reasonably close by and one definitely was better than the other in terms of customer service and answering questions etc. We went with the second one as they were head and shoulders above the first one we went to.

We've just done up our bathroom and suspect we're in a slightly different situation as we have a tradesman we use, so just needed to choose and buy the actual bathroom stuff rather than use a store's design/fitting service but I thought you might find it helpful to know where I sourced things as I spent ages online looking at things and working out what was best from where, all within a budget. I found that there wasn't any one single place that had everything in the style and price that I wanted.

• bathstore for toilet and bath, and bath waste.
• bathempire.com for screen, towel radiator and shower kit (one with a big square fixed shower head, plus a little movable rectangular one for handheld showering).
• victorianplumbing.com for the basin unit (I didn't have much space so needed something that would meet relatively tight dimensions so the majority of units were ruled out. i got one which came with square basin and floor-standing cabinet)
• taps4less for the taps (matching bath and basin mixers)
• topps tiles for all the tiling (we chose them and our tradesman went and bought them as he gets a discount there plus he knew how many packs to buy).

• the labour cost we paid included all the other bits that our tradesman used eg the new bits of piping, wood and mdf, grouting, tile spacers, sealant etc.

Just another thought. Do you have to use the high street chains or are there any local independent bathroom fitters/stockists near you? They can usually provide a much better level of service and work to all budgets. If you are in Rutland/Leics/Lincs area or North Yorks then I can recommend 2 fantastic independents who can design, supply & fit really good quality bathrooms.

I got the best prices and services by finding what I wanted at a showroom then finding the best on-line price and then asking a couple of local trade/stockists /plumb merchants if they could match the price. They did. I got the product I wanted at the best price and shopped locally. I used my local CityPlumber in Letchworth.