Dolphin Bathrooms..don't touch them. (Dolphin Bathrooms in General)

Member Name: Brian

Product:	Dolphin Bathrooms in General
Date:	16/08/08 (504 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: A likely nervous breakdown and a big hole in your bank account.

Dolphin Bathrooms ? ( and Moben Kitchens for that matter, they both come out of the same egg. )

Don't touch them with a bargepole. They.....

Are overpriced. ( almost double ),

Don't keep to timeline promises,

Have an abysmal customer complaints response attitude,

Don't use their own fitters despite their claim that they have their own,

Don't keep appointments, i.e. promises to call you at a specific time or on a specific day.

Make derisory compensation offers.

My story.....

We ordered a bathroom costing a total of £8,000 in November 2007. With the proximity of Christmas we agreed that the component parts could be delivered in late December with a fitment date in the first three weeks of January but in any case between 10 to 14 days after delivery.

The fitment did not include a toilet as that is in another room and did not need replacing. Parts to fit a bath, shower with glass protection panel, sink unit and vanity stand, mirror, tiles for floor and light fittings arrived on 20th December. On the 10 -14 day promise the fitment should have started in the first week of January. We had cleared our diary for the month on January.

The fitment agreement was to remove the old bathroom, re-plaster the walls and ceiling and tile floor to ceiling and fully across the floor. We required the full tiling as we live above a commercial premises and did not want to risk leakage into those premises.

After much argument and a spoilt foreign holiday because we spent the best part of two days on the phone to Dolphin from Thailand we finally got a pair of fitters to arrive on the 11th February 2008 to commence the fitment. It took two weeks to complete because they were never there for more than 5 hours per day. They didn't fit tiles floor to ceiling under the bath and they didn't tile the floor under the bath or the vanity unit. Sufficient tiles had been ordered and delivered but the spares as a result of not meeting the agreement magically disappeared.

To cut a long story short, we then had to spend a great deal of time and personal expense in lost wages, separate visits from two surveyors and two fitters to make good the floor and wall tiling plus a badly fitting bath side panel (which STILL doesn't fit properly), misaligned and badly fitted mirror, moving a shower head slide rail to where we could actually reach the shower head, replastering the ceiling because they did'nt run the cabling for the extractor fan until after they plastered and having a new vanity unit fitted after they drilled unnecessary holes in it.

It is now August 2008. I wrote demanding a £4,000 discount and compensation and have been offered £750 by Dolphin who don't care about the fact that I lost £4,000 in wages by having to be in waiting for them. That's my problem they say, not their fault.

I'm going to accept the £750 as I have this years' holidays coming up, then it's Christmas and I frankly never want to hear from Dolphin ever again.

One tip I will give you if you do decide to use them (please, PLEASE don't though) is to take advantage of the finance package. I did, with the intention of paying it off immediately after fitment. It gave me massive leverage over Dolphin because GE Finance will freeze payment until you personally authorise it. I have been told that I would have been offered a much smaller sum if I had not had a frozen payment method to hold against them.

Summary......

DON'T USE DOLPHIN BATHROOMS !!

Find a good, well respected and recommended local plumber and get him to fit a bathroom for you. I had three separate quotes from local plumbers to produce the bathroom that we eventually got and the highest quote, to remove old, make good and supply and fit parts was £4,800.
We're paying Dolphin £8,000 less their £750 offer.

Summary: Dolphin Bathrooms..don't touch them.