How much to lay carpet? Your experiences, please!

[ampere]

I will need the entire upstairs and stairs of a 4 bedroom house redoing. I suspect I will need new underlay as well.

I can work out the square meterage of both but how much on top would it cost to lay it IF I were to get an independent bloke in? Do they coat according to the meter plus any extra for tricky areas? (few, 10 year old estate house!).

I am planning on a 80/20 wool/manmade carpet and a reasonable quality underlay. As suggested elsewhere on MN.

See, I don't know if a fitter would charge £100 on top or £500. NO idea!

Ok, so we are doing a large hallway, to include 2 sets of stairs (26 treads) and a couple of 'tricky' areas.

We are paying approx £750 for an average hard wearing 80% wool carpet, mid-range underlay and fitting, through a small local independent carpet (carpet being approx £12pm). This price was better by £100 than another local one, and around £350 cheaper than somewhere like carpet right for similar range carpet.

Carpet right estimated approx £200 to fit this. Another independent co said they charge approx £3.50sm to fit on top.

A friend paid some-one privately to do 2 rooms upstairs and stairs and small hallway downstairs for £150.

Many people will not like doing stairs as they are fiddly, so might charge more for this, therefore all inc price might be best option?

also 'lovecarpet.com' are reasonably priced if you cannot get a local person who is well priced.

yes stay away from carpetright!! they bump up the costs almost willy nilly, when you sit down at the desk instore. What starts off as a reasonably priced carpet then includes 'extras' which when queried, suddenly they can bring the price down!!!

Even ridiculous delivery charges, on top, which had to be paid to the driver of the 'independent' fitters they used, plus the fitting charge.

I was conned!

I had 2 beds, landing, stairs done. no underlay except on the stairs and landing. The carpet was about £250, plus fitting of £100, and delivery charge of £25.

Any other experiences or words of wisdom?!

Don't buy loop carpet if you have pets or toddlers as they ladder easily.

We have just had carpet laid in the living room hallway stairs and landing by carpet right. We got a really cheap carpet and they wanted a ridiculous amount of money for underlay and gripper etc. They charged £2.50 per sqm for fitting with a charge on top for stairs plus delivery plus using own underlay, all in all the fitting aspect came to £170 for approx 50 sqm of carpet, which I thought wasn't too bad. We ordered underlay online (the cheapest type lol) which saved us a lot.