Just had another phone call from the company we commissioned to lay the bathroom flooring this week. The vinyl flooring that is there already is at least 15 years old, if not older, laid by our predecessors, and showing its age. Over the last year, we've slowly renovated the bathroom. The floor is all that needs doing now.
We like to go for quality so went for a well-known vinyl flooring manufacturer whose products were offered by a local company. We selected the make we liked and got our quote in the showroom. I nearly cried. Trust me to pick the most expensive style, purely by instinct. The bathroom is quite small, a touch over 2 square metres cover in total but the quote made it sound as though it was some sort of sprawling mansion bath landscape.
"What's underneath your existing vinyl, hardboard or floorboards?" -- "Hardboard", we said. "Excellent," the salesperson said, "so that doesn't need doing." They calculated three-quarters of a day's work for their fitter. Really? That long for 2 sqm of bendy plastic that already has hardboard laid? What'll he be doing in there, personally blowing on the glue to make it dry? But I thought, sod it, we both really liked the flooring, it would be water-proof but still look as close to wood flooring as you could get, and for that sort of money we wanted to make sure it was laid to standard by someone who knew what they were doing so we went ahead with it. OH managed to haggle the price down by 5%, we paid the deposit and made the appointment for this Friday.
Too good to be true, I thought. This is going far too well. Sure enough, OH takes a call this afternoon from Vinyl Man.
"We've checked the contract and discovered that the underflooring for your particular choice needs plywood, not hardboard. Terribly sorry."
"How much extra?"
"I'll have to find out. I'll check with them and ring you back."
OH reports this back to me. My initial response is unprintable. I knew it, I KNEW it! I tell him I've had enough, that this was total BS and that we're NOT going ahead with the job if they charge us massively extra, that these are classic tactics -- they've got us where they want: customer's paid the deposit and taken time off work, of course we'll swallow it, they think. No, we're not, I rage. They can stick their respectable brand right up their backsides; we'll get a decent-enough brand off our DIY shed for a fraction of their price and ask an independent fitter to do it for us. Job done. Sod "support local businesses" if that's what it boils down to!
"Would you like to speak to him when he rings?" OH asks sweetly.
The phone rings again. OH takes the call, for which I'm grateful. It's an extra 80 pounds on top of what already feels like an exorbitant bill. I gesture furiously, and rudely, in OH's direction. No way. We're stepping back from this. OH listens and says very little, merely informs Vinyl Man on the other end that this "now goes beyond our budget". He waits. Vinyl Man is a bit of a slow candidate: he doesn't pick up on the cue. "I'd like our deposit recredited back to our card," OH says. Still no response. So card details are given, the deposit wanders back to us, the call is over. We're back to square one.
"Okay," I say from the depth of our sofa, "I'm looking at some vinyl online right now..."
The phone rings again. It's Vinyl Man, for the third time today. He's had a brainwave. The brainwave involves us paying an extra £20, which brings us up to the original quote pre-discount and probably just about covers the plywood they now have to get in. OH signals the amount across to me. I nod. Not really okay, still feel tricked, but I can go with it.
So, the end of this week will, after all, be very busy, with Stove Man coming in on Thursday and Cavity Man and Vinyl Man hopefully doing their magic on Friday. Am really glad I managed to organise us a day out in London before all this madness now -- I still don't quite believe it'll all get done by the end of the week.
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