B&Q – Another Attempt

I forgot to say at the time, (although I did mention it in the summary of the week) but when we were checking out quotes and costs for getting floor tiles for the house – a large task, but one that makes a lot of sense in the long run- we decided to brave B&Q again. After all, I’ve slagged off their home delivery service and website, and the comments from various B&Q employees on there have all made out that the people in the store are a lot better.
Now bear in mind I didn’t go in with the attitude “B&Q are shit” or any preconceptions – and also bear in mind that we’ll be going back later for some of the things we do want, which we’ve seen there for decent prices.
Anyway, we’re looking for (at the time – the specs changed slightly later on) roughly 126m² of floor tiles. That equates to One Fuck Of A Lot of tiles. About a thousand tiles, depending on the tile size (obviously) and when you take into account the amunt of tile adhesive and grout we want as well, we’re talking somewhere around the £2-2,500 mark.
We see a tile type we like, and (when we eventually find one) ask a member of the staff team whether it’s possible to buy one tile to take home to check we like the things when they’re in situ.
“Oh, I dunno, snomydeparmen. I’llgoantryanfinesommunwhoknows” Roughly translated, this works out as “Oh, I don’t know. Sorry, it’s not my department. Wait here, and I’ll go and try to find someone who does know, and may be able to help you“. I think.
We wait.
Eventually he comes back with someone else.
“We don’t do sample tiles. It’s not policy”
“We’re not wanting to just take one, we’re quite happy to pay for it”
“We don’t do sample tiles. It’s not policy. You can buy a complete box, and bring it back for a refund”
“We don’t want a box. We just want one tile so we can see how it looks. Look, here’s one that’s seperate, so you don’t even need to break open a pack”
“We don’t do sample tiles. It’s not policy.You can buy a complete box, and then bring it back for a refund”
“Look, we’re going to be buying a hundred and twenty five square metres of these tiles. We would like to buy this one seperate tile, so we can see how it looks in the place before buying two grands worth of tiles, plus adhesive and grout”
You guessed it.
“We don’t do sample tiles. You can buy a full box, then return it if you don’t like them”
“OK, so for want of this one seperate tile, you’re prepared to lose a sale of about two thousand pounds?”
“We don’t do sample tiles”
“Can I speak to your manager please? I’d just like them to know why they’re going to lose this amount of business”
“I am the manager” (Aye, right)
“OK, then. You’ve just lost our business, because you won’t let us buy this one tile, because it’s ‘not policy’. That’s two grand (roughly) plus all the adhesive, tile grout and so on. Nice work.

He did let us have the tile in the end, once we’d started walking away. Amazing what that’ll do, just demonstrating that actually yes, you can find other places, and that B&Q aren’t the be-all and end-all of the business. I’m not quite sure what the ‘policy’ is that he was quoting, but I suspect it’s “B&Q have a policy of not wanting large dollops of business. Piss off to a proper place instead”

Unsurprisingly, we won’t be going with them for the tiles. And yet again it gives the lie to all those commenters who say that the staff in-store at B&Q are really helpful and do their best to help anyone who asks.

In my store (replicated across the entire network) we give 200% effort into giving every single customer excelent customer service.

Aye, right. 200% of fuck-all is still fuck-all.