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Be VERY WARY of the offer of Free Fitting, free underlay etc. It may not always be as it seems.

"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make
a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people
who consider price only are this man's lawful prey."
John Ruskin 1819-1900

Why risk your investment in carpet for the sake of a few extra pounds. The fitters are not working for free and will need to be paid by the shop. You are buying fabric to put on the floor to be walked on. Without a good underlay and careful fitting you are seriously jeopardizing your investment.

So how can it be free?

There are three possible reasons, or a combination of them, behind this 'free' offer.

1. The carpet price has been inflated to cover this cost of fitting and underlay.

2. The supplier is using the cheapest underlay and fitters that they can find.

3. The manufacturers price to the shop has for some reason been discounted from its usual price and rather than selling it cheaper, the shop are selling on at its usual price and absorbing the cost of fitting in the extra profit. The shop could actually be making a bigger profit.

There is nothing wrong with honest profit. Businesses that don't grab every opportunity to make extra profit will go out of business in this highly competitive world.

Lets look at each in turn. If the price of the carpet has been inflated to hide the fitting cost then you are still paying for it. This is deception if it is claimed to be free. Whereas if the carpet is advertised as "Fitting included" then it is truthful. In both cases though they may also be using the cheapest fitters, the second reason above. To make enough money each day these cheap fitters need to get the job done as fast as possible so that they can cram as many jobs into the day as possible. That sort of rushed work is hardly likely to produce quality fitting. There have also been cases where complaints about poor fitting have been greeted with "Well, madam, you didn't pay for fitting. It was free. Nothing we can do". While a trip to trading standards will always produce satisfactory results, it is surprising how many people accept what the salesman says and do nothing.

In the third case there are honest traders and dishonest traders. Carpets are discounted to the shops for various reasons. The colour of a production run of a carpet, due to a mistake in dying may be so different from the samples that it cannot be sold as such and it is then usually heavily discounted to get rid of it. This is absolutely perfect carpet in every other way. It represents a very good buy, if you like the colour.

Carpet ranges get up dated and old designs and colourways get discounted to clear the warehouse. Again perfect carpet and a good buy if you like the carpet.

But carpets can be discounted because there is some imperfection or flaws in the weave. These rolls of carpet are usually sold to the shops at less than they cost to make.

I will relate a story from my own experience. At the time I worked for a high class home furnisher. A customer came in one day with a sample of carpet. She needed the sittingroom carpeted. I recognised the sample as coming from a range of carpets that was produced in two qualities. Heavy duty and medium duty. She asked me for our price for the heavy duty. I gave her a unit price on the carpet. At which point the customer stopped me, saying that a local carpet shop had told her that they would do it for less than our price with free fitting. I asked for the opportunity to at least let me measure up for an estimate. "It wouldn't be worth my while staying at home", she said.

About a year late the customer returned asking us to quote for hall stairs and landing. She went on to explain that when the sittingroom carpet arrived she notice that it was labeled as the medium quality and not the heavy quality that she had ordered. She hand demaned that they took it back and supply the correct quality. Of course they did.

When I went out to estimate, she showed me the original estimate for the sitting room. I noticed that the price that they had charged for carpet gripper was 3 times our price. I lifted the corner of the sittingroom carpet to see which underlay they had used. It was the cheapest foam chip product made, yet they were selling it at a higher price than the 25 year guarantee underlay we supplied. The excess profit on those two items alone would have more than covered the fitting cost.

The message here is if you are comparing estimates, be sure that you are comparing like with like and carefully check what is actually delivered.

There was a carpet retailer some years ago who used to use the following in their advertisements.

"We charge for our carpet fitting
because we are proud of our workmanship.
Why not be proud of our workmanship too?"