Do I need spare tiles after tiling finished?

[BewareTheBeardedDragon]

Having new shower enclosure and tiling done. Thought I'd ordered enough and to spare tiles, but transpired today as tiler part way through that I had miscalculated and he has only just managed to scrape the tiling with what I have and none left over.

At one point he thought he couldn't manage it and I ordered another box of tiles earlier today.

Now I'm in a quandary - I got the tiles from
an online retailer - who have a flat £39 delivery free for orders under £499. Would have been fine if I'd managed to get it right and order all I needed initially, but the extra tiles I've ordered cost half the delivery fee. Tiler says it's prudent to keep spares in case you ever need to fix a breakage.

So my question is should I leave order to be delivered and pay £60 for £20 worth of tiles in order to have spares. Or cancel it and have no spares?

I know that it'd be near impossible to match them properly ever because when I was panicking thinking he couldn't finish today and that I'd be left without a shower until his next availability in June because of slow delivery time I went around local tile shops trying to match and came up with nothing.
Then - I've never had to replace a wall tile ever. Have I just been lucky?

I don't think I've ever needed to replace bathroom tiles. Or any tiles at all!

The only thing is - in one bathroom I had, the builder tiled up the side of the bath without building a door (for investigating under the bath in the event of leaks). Had the bath leaked, the plumber would've had to smash the tiles, and I would've needed to replace them. So just make sure you don't have things like that!

We needed a replacement tile when we had a new shower fitted. The previous owners left spare tiles so that was handy.

Eek, maybe I'd better just swallow the horrific delivery charge for peace of mind. I suppose one of the kids smashing a tile, or there being a problem with the plumbing that needed to be accessed is conceivable. Though the other side of the wall in which the pipes are buried is just plasterboard and accessible so maybe that wouldn't be an issue.
I just wish I'd got the right bloody number in the first place. Lessons have been learned 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

We had a leak which damaged the tiles- was though a pipe in a next door room. So had to get new tiles. Also annoying as builder miscalculated the cost. May as well get some more while they can be found, if I were you

I found myself with 10 boxes left over but now I'm SO bloody thankful as there are pipe issues & the whole shower has to come out. I have just enough to repair it.

Definitely keeping order then. And next time know better and get enough for a decent number of spares in one shipment.

We kept the spares in the garage for years without needing, then needed two as DD crashed a movable towel rail into some and they cracked! We didn't bother replacing them for ages, but it was a quick job for a handyman to spruce up the bathroom ahead of selling the house, whereas otherwise it would have been a total pain!

We kept some spare tiles when we did our kitchen, as we had half a box left. 10 years later and we are getting a new boiler and part of the work involves removing the tiles, so I'm pleased we kept the spares.

I think it’s worth having spares in case of a leak, water getting getting behind the tiles (happened to us in the past) it was handy to have the spares.