So you are told B&Q are cheap.

B&Q Hedge End
Bag of 20mm gravel. £13 each, 3 for 2 offer.

Hilliers Garden Centre Botley
Bag of 20mm gravel. £4.99 each, 3 for £12.

Hmm.

 

IDK where you got the idea that B&Q were cheap. It's for people who are too lazy to visit a timber merchant, then a gardening centre, then the plumbers merchant etc etc. You pay for the convenience. Because they know their customers are lazy they also get away with selling a lot of poor quality items - all the "you shouldn't really be buying this sort of thing here" stuff.

 

B and q, where you can pay about a fiver for ten self tappers in a pack. And they are made of cheese, so they round off the moment they meet any resistance…

Masking tape that doesn’t have any sticky on

1 metre lengths of various materials, for the price of ten metres if you know where to go..


It’s a wonder they are still in business now we all have the internet to find these things elsewhere, (which is invariably on the same industrial estate )

 

You can get a 850kg dumpy bag for around forty quid.

 

B&Q and Screwfix are both owned by Kingfisher PLC. One place for mugging and one for those wise to it.

 

I bought some a while back at £3.75 a bag, so like a lot of places these days, they’ve must have the displayed price wrong.


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10% off at wickes

 

Most of their hardware, light fittings etc. are quite poor quality, but not cheap.
Wood is poor quality too...even if you select the straight bits, they warp and twist when you make something from it.

 

Wickes or B&Q? Wickes wood is absolutely the worst sh*** I've ever come across, I needed a couple of pieces recently one Sunday afternoon, with the proper timber merchants closed, so called in at Wickes. I had to dig out and go through the whole stack of 2x4's they had to find just 2 that were something like straight enough to use. Shockingly poor quality at twice the price of a timber yard.

 

It is annoying, there is so much poor quality rubbish in all of these outfits that exist on every industrial estate..

 

It's another case of"shop around" though with those two... They're both equally "convenient" for us, (four mile drive vs twenty) when we need something "yesterday" ... I always check the price in both because sometimes it's less in B&Q, sometimes in Screwfix.
I initially thought Kingfisher needed to get their act together but now wonder whether they're actually playing quite a good game of "Supermarket loss leader" ... Get folk into a store with items going cheap and they'll buy everything else they need on the same visit regardless .....?

 

This is why I buy all my timber and gravel in Waitrose

 

Have they improved their spirit level pricing might you know?

 

No idea, but their Organic Gravel and Jojoba is excellent.

 

Well, we didn't expect anything less!

 

I assumed they'd brought in the Shamen Spirit Level range......its endorsed by a small yet colourfully dressed young man from the Indian sub continent.

Not only will he tell you if your wall is plumb, he will also tell how your ancestors feel about it.

 

John Lewis do a nice range of planed 2 x 4. They'll gift wrap it if you ask.

 

Has it got a 5 year guarantee?