Consumer Skepticism

[Dr B]

Not really a scientific issue but here an example of the sort of thing we could be helping the consumer with (though I accept that 'Which' magazine does this as well).

Anyway, recently I decided to renovate our home. This included, among other things, sorting out the floor in the house and extension (it's uneven in places). I also wanted a wooden floor. I originally was thinking of getting engineered wood (like Parador) but decided instead to go for a good quality solid wood (oak) floor.

I spoke to around 5 flooring companies and the advice / job description varied massively. Having done my own research, including going for a pint with a trading standards guy, I came to the conclusion that the capacity to either be ripped off or be given bad advice is high. If you are thinking of getting a good quality flooring my initial advice (brief) would be as follows.

1 - do not buy products from the big 'home improvement' chains.
2 - do not buy products from China or East asia - they delaminate or bow in our climate and you will have to replace it all
3 - engineered flooring is an affordable alternative to laminate - get good quality eng wood if you can stretch to it.
4 - think about whether the floor can be / should be floated or not (fine for laminate and some eng woods, but not solid).
5 - moisture content - different decisions for kitchens and bathrooms - some products are totally unsuitable for the kitchen - dont buy them!!!!

6 - solid floors cannot be floated and must be either bonded or fixed to the sub-floor (or both) and this can require a new sub-floor if yours in unsuitable to take it.

I originally thought my floor would cost around £3000 - £4500. However, it is going to cost double that - and I am not being ripped off (i need a lot of sub-floor preparation that you might not need). However, only certain people told me about this. Others were quite happy to fit expensive floors in a wholly inappropriate way. It is this that I am warning against here.

I am not an expert but i would suggest to anyone thinking of laying down a new wood floor to think along these lines (this is just my opinion)

Good / high quality laminate - Pergo
Good / high quality engineered wood - Parador
Good / high quality solid flooring - Tuscan

European materials is the way to go.......

If anyone else here has had any issues or wants to share advice...then here is the place to discuss it. Obviously i am not qualified to give advice to you, but this is my experience so far and based on my own research over the last couple of months.

[Harryprice]

Whenever I buy anything I always research it on the web first. Not just the specs, reviews and what to look for, but people's actual experiences with specific products. I think skepticism is a great tool for consumerism and could be a great way of popularising the subject. It is an area where people could see a practical benefit to skepticism and that it is not 'disbelieving things', which is the popular image.

Maybe a video on YouTube with DrB showing how he selected his flooring! I'd certainly watch that! Make it quirky enough and it could go viral!

I'm sure I could think of hundreds of more interesting things to so with £3.5 - 5K rather than getting a wooden floor!

[skbuncks]

What's wrong with straw?

skb

ETA: On a more serious I certainly agree that the application of skepticism to consumerism is a good way of sneaking it into the way people think without them noticing.

[Dr B]

Whenever I buy anything I always research it on the web first. Not just the specs, reviews and what to look for, but people's actual experiences with specific products. I think skepticism is a great tool for consumerism and could be a great way of popularising the subject. It is an area where people could see a practical benefit to skepticism and that it is not 'disbelieving things', which is the popular image.

Maybe a video on YouTube with DrB showing how he selected his flooring! I'd certainly watch that! Make it quirky enough and it could go viral!

I'm sure I could think of hundreds of more interesting things to so with £3.5 - 5K rather than getting a wooden floor!

You would need a wide-angle lens to get me on youtube . I agree that the Internet is a wonderful thing and there is lots of information out there. But rather like what we discussed in another thread about cameras and the megapixel myth, there is a lot of nonsense out there about wooden floors and how they should be installed correctly. It is difficult to tell at first the good from the bad.

Proper flooring is a job for a floor man and not a builder per-se.

Here is an example. For fitting a solid oak floor you need to bond / glue it down or use what they call 'secret screws'. Some people use both techniques together which is fine as well. You need to leave an expansion gap around the floor as well. However, the adhesive needs to be chosen correctly. If you go for the strongest stuff out there, and your floor expands too much, it can bring a wall down quite easily and / or rip the concrete up that it has been bonded to. You need a strong adhesive, but not so strong that it wont give way and alert you to problems if some emerge. I never knew I would have to research 'glue' when deciding to renovate my home.....

Another is the sub-floor. Again for solid woods this needs to be chosen correctly and the moisture content of concrete floors needs to be measured carefully. While all this might put some people off - it should not. It just requires finding information and people that know what they are doing. I could quite easily have wasted my money here due simply to not knowing all that i need to know.

The least said about our need for a new kitchen the better....these prices are just made up I am sure.....

[bindeweede]

The least said about our need for a new kitchen the better....these prices are just made up I am sure.....

We had a new kitchen fitted just over a month ago. Even an "economical" installation makes the eyes water, cost-wise. We visited the DIY stores looking at units, but weren't impressed. And buying the units is just a tiny part of the business. I did some searches on customer satisfaction for the DIY stores and although some customers were happy with their new kitchens, many weren't, mainly not satisfied with the quality of fitting. So I visited my local independent store - owner been in the kitchen business for 30 years. He came, measured up, got a designer to design, sent me the quote. In the meantime, I visited John Lewis's kitchen dept. and came back immensely depressed at what your money can buy. Apparently you CAN spend up to £600 on a metre of granite worktop.

Our local shop recommended units from Crown Imperial, a UK firm I'd never heard of. But they are very good quality and we're very pleased. The fitter did an excellent job, removing old stuff, installing lighting, electrics, plumbing and new units. Separate gas fitter, plasterer, flooring chap and tiler were used.

Nothing to do with skepticism I'm afraid. I didn't get 2 quotes, which is what you are supposed to do, but the job was well done. A small amount of money was required up front, but the bulk on completion and satisfaction.

It's a big, expensive job, and not having a kitchen for several days is a major inconvenience. But the new posh oven does great chips.

[Dr B]

Hi Binde

We are where you were a few months ago. I am looking at kitchens - not going down the DIY route as i am simply not going to part with my cash for that quality (and i have heard the same as you).

I agree - small local companies can be good (if not better) but some larger ones are OK. There is a good one here in the midlands called 'Avanti' - which might be more nationwide now. They look good, have good reviews, and make their own units so its fully bespoke in that sense. Having their own factory helps keep costs down. My wife wants granite tops as well....if she gets it then i need a new job to pay for it....

I have three quotes at present including Avanti which is in the middle in terms of cost. The quotes have a range of £8000 difference between the cheapest private firm and the biggest chain we went to (all for more or less the same kitchen). I simply dont know where all the cost comes from. I ppreciate the tradesman pricing (fitting etc) but everything else seems pure fancy.

[Admin]

I think that consumer advocacy is one of the possible ways to help popularise skepticism. That's because people can see the relevance of it to their everyday lives.

We did make a start on it here: http://www.ukskeptics.com/lifestyle.php a few years ago; but as with the rest of the site, it needs revamping and added to.

[smudge]

I think that consumer advocacy is one of the possible ways to help popularise skepticism. That's because people can see the relevance of it to their everyday lives.

We did make a start on it here: http://www.ukskeptics.com/lifestyle.php a few years ago; but as with the rest of the site, it needs revamping and added to.

I'll avoid going on an anti advertising rant!
Promoting and selling products like anti aging cream and food are rife with BS. If we could find ways of promoting clear thinking in this type of area the scope for widening interest in skepticism is huge.

[DrS]

I agree, and I think, like John, that it's the one area where people will see the relevance. Many will have made a start on it by themselves, without being fully aware of what they're doing. It's also an area where we can seem less strident, and be seen to be acting in favour of something (consumer protection) rather than being "against" everything, which is how I think we're often seen (something that is not remotely helped by the frequent misuse of the word sceptic/skeptic).

[Pebble]

There are already many good sources of information on this topic, the problem seems to be providing it in a package that those serching for information are likely to find. Unless they realise themselves that decision making is irrational, they may not even know to look.

I particularly liked "Predictably Irrationality" by Dan Ariely, which reports many of his experiments into how people make decisions. Having said that, none of the trials appear to have dealt well with the issue of investigator bias.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational

[Dubious Dick]

Have thought for years that 'How to be an efficient consumer' should be a subject in Schools. As I recall my Economics lessons, spending is economic voting, and the more carefully we exercise our votes, the more efficient the market becomes.

I would like to add a legal requirement for companies to pay at least the costs of their mistakes/product failures i.e. if you have to drive back to a store to sort out a problem then your travel costs at least are recoverable. Preferably also compensation for time involved.

I am convinced that these two measures would, if well implemented, make the market what it should be i.e. properly responsive to the consumer, much more efficient, and we would see a major leap forward in terms of reliability/durability of what we buy.

My only concern is whether this might result in greater unemployment with all the people involved in customer support/complaints, repairs, and replacements out of work. Not sure about this one. Have often thought wouldn't it be great if nearly all transactions were more efficient but would that mean greater levels of unemployment and have a negative impact through the cost of that?