We are not having a good time of things at the moment with the bathroom. It feels like the world is against us.

On our return from skiing we noted that the replacement bath leg still hadn't arrived from Ideal Standard, three weeks after we had called and complained and they had promised to send within 2-3 days.

So Dom rang Doble Bathrooms yesterday(the place where we bought our bathroom suite from) to be told that he needed to get a returns number from Ideal Standard to be able to replace/ refund us.

He then duly rang Ideal Standard and spent 37 minutes on the phone trying to get his message across to a couple of different customer services attendants. Their response was very poor. They argued that we should have checked the items for damage. Well, of course we checked for damage, but it's not until you fit something that you find out that screw-holes are in the wrong place.

It was then that Dom mentioned the second issue with the bolt holes not being deep enough on the toilet pan and they started to show some sympathy. They checked and found that multiple toilet pans had the same problem. However, their suggestion for the toilet was to saw the bolt down to make it fit the hole! The cheek!

We are now buying another bath because we can't wait for the issue with this one to be resolved and at the end of the call they were asking to see proof of purchase of our new bath before they would authorise the return but this is irrelevant and none of their business!

We checked our statutory rights last night and we are entitled to a refund as the goods are clearly not of satisfactory quality. We informed them in good time, and they recorded on their system "leg failed". Why is this such a battle? Whatever happened to the customer being right or at least being treated with courtesy?

We have emailed them again today, but have severely lost any shred of respect for them that we might have had. Now the thought of seeing their logo emblazoned on our sanitaryware really infuriates me. Grr!

As if that wasn't enough, we called yesterday to chase the new towel radiator I ordered from radiatorfactory.net. I purposely ordered one from their 'stock items' so that it would be with us quickly, and three weeks on, no sign. When we called yesterday they told us that the goods are sent out directly from the manufacturer and they just assume they have been sent until a customer complains! Surely a responsible trader would expect a dispatch note to say when goods have been delivered. Clearly all they are interested in is taking our money and anything else after that is superfluous.

I'm starting to wonder whether we should stop ordering from these small suppliers on the internet. If it works it is OK, but if something goes wrong it is much more difficult to get things sorted.

Labels: buying, d.i.y.