“In hindsight a very poor decision to put trust in Tesco Finest Bathrooms. The "designer" failed to make an adequate design for one bathroom with wet floor (we unfortunately had 2 bathrooms and a downstairs cloakroom fitted by them). The contract small print is in the favour of the actual supplier Mark Two, trading under the Tesco banner.
The tradesmen employed are on very tight budgets and do not get paid well, hence they rush and do not clean up adequately. Inferior materials are used ie no water resistant plasterboard and no cement backer boards. Tradesmen were flexible to inevitable changes that occur in any major refurbishment, however, Mark Two as an organisation are not flexible.
One bathroom should have been re-surveyed and redesigned, due to cost savings by company, poor management of the work, this allowed the workforce to cut corners. One bathroom had the floor laid twice, an ensuite bathroom with wet floor resulted in the water running the full length of the bathroom and pooling in a far corner. The Mark Two manager tried to convince me that the 5deg slope in the wrong direction on the floor was "within tolerance" The floor was taken up and replaced, though far from perfect. Work took two months scheduled for 2 weeks. Ensuite wet room floor failed after 9 months, took another 7 months to get Mark Two to repair. Repair was still not ideal. Other faults such as failing lights and bathroom mirrors and extractors replaced at the same time.
Floor failed for a second time and began leaking into surrounding chipboard flooring, above kitchen that had just been replaced. Knowing that Mark Two had been declared bankrupt, I had little choice but to rectify the problem myself. Whilst carefully removing the many layers of the floor I discovered to my horror the fatal flaws in the design and execution of the previous work. The tiles were laid on over 20mm of adhesive, laid on top of tanked 10mm marine ply screwed to the original chipboard. The wet floor area in the shower was a hotpotch of marine ply, 18mm loft board (instead of 22mm water resistant chipboard) and a fiberglass wet floor insert of inadequate size, in the wrong place and and supported on 10mm plywood instead of 22mm chipboard. The enter shower area was inadequately supported, and was always going to fail. In addition to the poor workmanship, I had to remove several large containers of waste and rubble from under the floor, left by tradesmen who were too time pushed and too uncaring to remove their own waste.
After paying for bespoke replacement parts and contacting reliable local tradesmen, I contacted Tesco. They obviously are on a damage limitation exercise with what was left after the collapse of Mark Two. I supposedly have a 25 year guarantee for the hardware and a year guarantee for the work. Since the floor has failed 3 times in 3 years I pointed out that this would constitute a 1 year average life of the workmanship. Tesco were were very polite but firmly refused to help. I will have spent approx £2500 to rectify the failed work and this includes 10 days of my own time. I have considered taking legal action, however, such action against bankrupt Mark Two would be fruitless. However, I consider Tesco culpable for enabling Mark Two to trade under their banner, offering "Tesco promises" and "Tesco guarantees" in the sales literature which are worthless. I will take legal advice as to the possibility of taking Tesco to the small claims court. I would be interested to find others in my position.”
“we had our bathroom ripped out and a shower put in along with a high rised toilet and new sink. Biggest mistake was going through Tescos, I am registered Disabled which is why we had a new bathroom fitted with a shower so that I could have a bit of independence. From the start it was a shambles, they had this sub contractor come out he ripped everything out laid the marine wood floor but run out do used odd bits of wood which looked like a patch work quilt.
After a few months we had a leak that came through the kitchen ceiling and down the back of the kitchen cupboards, after loads of phone calls they sent a guy out and the first guy hadn't snapped the pipes on properly.
Did this fix it no, in the end I rang the company and insisted that they send some sort of manager out. The guy turned up about a week later all the flooring on the bathroom floor was lifting, his answer for that was its where it's stretched. I said to him it's where the water from the leak is running but he insisted that it wasn't.
He told myself and my husband that he would send somebody out by the end of the week to get it sorted, guess what it took another two weeks before anybody came out and then another month for the floor and everything to dry out.
Eventually they fixed the problem, we now have a problem with the toilet it has a leak. Tesco Customer Services telephoned me and said they would send some paper work out, I was to fill it in send what they needed and they would pass it on to the claims team.
They are asking for a quote, how can I get a quote when if somebody was to cone out they would have to take tiles etc off as its a floating toilet and all the works are in the wall.
I think the whole thing is a joke, we were told that our guarantee for the bathroom was with tescos. I think tesco's should step up to the plate and get these problems sorted because surely they made enough money out of people that have had bathroom and kitchens fitted.”
