EXETER, UK. September 2nd, 2026 – A three-way bathroom quote comparison may give Exeter homeowners the impression that they are choosing between different prices for the same project, when in reality each quotation can contain a different level of work and materials, according to a local installer.
Luxury Bathrooms Exeter says it regularly meets homeowners holding three quotes for what they believe is one identical job, separated by thousands of pounds. A customer in Pinhoe earlier this year had been quoted £11,400, £14,800 and £17,900 for the same room. None of the three firms had done anything wrong. They had priced three different specifications. One allowed £400 for taps and shower valves where another allowed £1,640, and only one had priced the floor preparation at all.
The company estimates around one in four quote comparisons brought to it at survey stage has the same fault underneath it: the totals differ because the scope differs, not because one firm is charging more for the same work.
For homeowners, the risk is that the cheapest quote is often the least complete. Allowances for items the customer has not yet chosen, known in the trade as prime cost sums, can be set low enough to make a total look competitive, then climb sharply once real tiles and brassware are picked. Work nobody can price until the old bathroom comes out, such as floor decking, joists and the plaster behind forty-year-old tiles, may appear as a provisional sum in one document and go unmentioned in the next.
“A quote that lists what it cannot yet price usually lands closer to the final bill than one that reads clean,” said Ross of Luxury Bathrooms Exeter. “If nobody has mentioned the floor, nobody has looked at it.”
Exeter’s housing stock sharpens the point. Much of the city’s Victorian and Edwardian terracing, along with its older semis, sits on suspended timber floors that cannot be assessed until the existing covering comes up. A price given without a site visit has no basis for that work at all.
The firm has published guidance on lining competing quotes up on equal terms. Its central recommendation is to ask every firm for an itemised specification, with each product named or given a supply budget, each area of tiling measured and each trade listed, then to test those allowances against what the homeowner actually intends to buy rather than against each other. It also suggests adding up every provisional sum in each document, noting what each one stays quiet about, and confirming whether VAT is included, which on its own moves a total by a fifth.
“Nobody should be picking a fitter on a single number,” Ross added. “Ask for the breakdown before you ask for the price. Any firm worth hiring already has one.”
