Carpet Pricing Help.

[Samantha Booth]

I may be being nieve here but could do with some advice.

I have been to a carpet shop today, a local one, he has been out to measure up for me already. The carpet we liked was £7.99 sm. Now we want carpet in three bedrooms and lino in two bathrooms. These carpets btw are roll ends and he is shutting up shop to move to bigger premises. He said he had enough on this one roll to do all three bedrooms. Sizes are

13x9............10.7x9.7........and 10.7x6.10 The bathrooms are 5x7.7............and 6.7x3.4. All sizes are in feet. He gave us a price including fitting, grippers, door plates and underlay, basically everything for £788.

Been to another shop, still local, and saw a lovely carpet that is £13.49 sm. Underlay is exactly the same. Obviously the carpet is more per square metre. He said the lino quoted will be £17.99 as all the ones we liked were that price. He quoted for exactly the same carpets in the same rooms. His price was £850. That includes the same, nderlay, gripper rods, fitting, plates etc.

i cannot figure this out why something at £13.49psm is only slightly dearer than carpets at £7.99.

What am I missing apart from the obvious brain ;)

[Cerberus .]

Just using quick mental arithmetic, the first quote is charging you £440 for fitting & the second £320.

Don

[Samantha Booth]

On the first quote, the cheaper of the two, he has it wrote down that fitting is just £95 and I am to pay the man on the day for this. This is included in the £788 quote.

[Alan]

In message , Samantha Booth wrote

Scenario 1 One comes with free underlay and fitting - but in reality nothing is free. The £13 carpet is actually a £8 carpet that has been priced to include an underlay and fitting. the cheaper carpet doesn't cover the cost of the underlay.

Scenario 2 The carpets are of different widths on the roll and there is more wastage on one of them. The cheaper carpet may be wider and although you don't need all of the width you will be charged for the bits they throw away (or you keep it in case of future accidents). Carpets don't come in standard widths of 10.7 :)

Scenario 3 The carpet is priced per square yard but actually comes in metres. This trick used to be used in the carpet trade adds 10 percent to the price

[Samantha Booth]

The way shop two £850 has wrote is down here is

2.80x4 (11.2m2) 3x4 (12m2) 2.10x4 (8-4m2)

Bathrooms

2.30x2 2.10x1

[Cerberus .]

The total area is 40m2 (approx) so,

quote 1 = 40 x £7.99 = £319 for flooring

£788 (quote) - £319 (carpet) + £95 (fitting) = £374 for underlay, carpet grips etc quote 2 = 40 x £13.49 = £540 £850 (quote) - £540 (carpet) = £310 for fitting, underlay, carpet grips etc. Don.

[Lobster]

The square-footage price is really pretty meaningless; a lot of these places reel in the punters by quoting a low square-foot rate, and they make all their profit (and I mean, all!) on the ancillary bits like underlay and gripper rods.

The smart way forward, especially with a full house-worth to do, is to buy all that stuff separately from somewhere like and then ask for a quote for just the carpet, saying you'll get the rest elsewhere. They'll wince but still sell it to you, as they can hardly refuse...

The other point to consider is that with a large area to carpet, an experienced and honest measurer/surveyor (or whatever they call themselves) can make a big difference by knowing how to cut the carpet lengths most economically, with minimal wastage for the customer. [Remember the carpet comes in standard widths (usually 4m I think).]

David

[Samantha Booth]

Sorry for being dimhere but howdo you work out when a room is say 13 foot by

9 foot what the square meterage is?

[fred]

In article , Samantha Booth writes

I would advise caution on a pay the fitter on the day type deal, if you do this you have no comeback against the shop if the fitter is incompetent or causes damage and you likely wont have the fitters name, phone number or address to pursue him, beware.

If you pay the shop for the whole deal, including fitting your contract is with them for a complete and satisfactory job, paying by credit card adds extra security.

[JoeJoe]

1 foot = 0.304 m

13 x 9 = (13x0.304) x (9x0.304)=3.952 x 2.736 = 10.81 m2 (that's square metres)

[Lobster]

That's true, although IME most outlets use self-employed fitters who are 'pay-on-the-day', and it's only the "top" places where you'd get an all-in deal, and the total cost is likely to reflect that - you pays yer money and takes yer choice, I suppose.

That said, it's obviously not in the interest of a carpet outlet to use cowboy fitters, and of the many 'pay-on-the-day' lads I've used, I've never had any problems with them at all.

David

[Lobster]

This is where what I was on about measuring up comes into its own.

Eg, if you had just a 13x9 foot room to carpet and nothing else, and your chosen carpet comes only on a 4m roll (that's about 13 feet 1 inch), then the roll would be too short to use lengthwise in the room (allowing for turnover at each end), and you'd have to use it widthwise. So you'd have to buy a piece of carpet 4m x 13 feet (I hate the mixed units but you started it!) which is 17.1 m2, and you'd just waste a large area measuring 4m x 2.7m.

However, if you're doing several rooms at once, hopefully that bit will be usable somewhere else, eg bathroom or landing, and wastage will be minimal.

David

[Andy Hall]

Throw away anything in your house that measures in feet, pounds, fluid ounces and all the rest of them. These are ancient units that should no longer be in use.

Confusion arises when people try to mix systems of measurement and to do conversions. The chances of error are high.

Measure the room in metres in each direction using a metric tape measure. These are obtainable from DIY stores, although unfortunately many of them still have the deprecated inches on them as well. You can ignore the inches scale, however.

Take the measurements of the room in metres and multiply them together. Then you will have the area in square metres. Very simple and no risk of errors.

Replace all forms of measurement with metric versions and life will be idyllic henceforth.

[F]

As no less an organisation as NASA found out to their $125 million cost:

[Dave Liquorice]

Or Air Canada but they were lucky it didn't cost 'em much more than a dent in their pride that one could have been a lot worse.

[Peter Johnson]

But you will also have to pay VAT on the fitting, one of the reasons it is usually 'pay on the day'.

[Bob Eager]

They were lucky in particular that one of the pilots weas a very good glider pilot! And that the other knew about a small airport from his service days...

[Andy Hall]

This is a security issue as well.

If one has a contract of supply for the carpet and the fitting with the shop, the shop owns the problem if the fitter screws up the work, the carpet is defective etc.

If one has a side deal for cash, then there is a much weaker position if anything goes wrong. The cost of addressing that could well be considerably greater than the small saving on the fitting cost.

[Geo]

Except of course that we use feet for altitude and ground elevation in the aircraft flight sense.

Geo

[Lobster]

Not sure about that. Given that if the customer goes to the shop and asks to buy a carpet and have it fitted, then the shop organises everything. Typically what happens is as follows. It's not presented to the customer as a separate contract with a self-employed fitter; you go in for a quote, the shop calculates materials and fitting costs, you agree the fitting date with the shop there and then (they obviously keep the fitters' diaries), and tell you to pay the fitter direct "oh and they like cash please".

I suspect that if the customer had some issue over the supply/fitting that the shop was unwilling to resolve, that they wouldn't be particularly keen for the details of the arrangment to be made public in court as I would have thought HMRC would take a dim view of the shop's involvement - so maybe the customer's position is *strengthened* ;-)

Even if not, I think the shop would have a hard time completely washing their hands of any involvement with issues surrounding the fitting process.

David