Homebase CLosing Down Sale Oct 18

Oh come oooooonnn.......!!!

When Homebase merged some of their (excellent) Bunnings with their less than excellent Homebase, and started closing the remainder, there was a chance to sell some stuff...

a chance

So I went to my local (ish) Homebase and as I drove up to it my eyes were assaulted with SALE and EVERYTHING MUST GO and CLOSING DOWN (this location only)...blah blah.. hopeful.

and I entered to see....


15% off and a 20% off.....

and more 15% off... and then a 10% off

I DID fnd some 50% off....... off nails and screws which started 4x more than I can get them delivered in the post (and they're HEAVY)... making the reduced price a mere 200% more than they should have been.

Absolute total garbage ..."Sale " my arse.

Move on... nothing to see here.

I've been to a few of their store closing sales, never anything worth having, and the big ticket stuff was snapped up even if the discounts didn't even bring it below the amazon price.

Maplins was even worse, was in there a while ago, saw a Logitech wheel reduced by 40-50%, there was a stack so I went around the trading estate to have a think. PC World, literally next door, had it for less without any discount at all.

No wonder they go out of business

Bunnings really did bun-g up their purchase of Homebase,didn't they??

Since when did Homebase have anything worth buying, ever?
We have/had at least two of them here in town and they're always messy, half-empty places of desolate hopelessness.

Plumbing, sinks, toilets, cookers and doors could all have standard dimensions all around the world, but if you're looking for a standard fitting kit Homebase will only have a kit for the weirdly dimensioned versions they have in stock that week... and if you say, "Stuff it, I'll just reinstall a whole new thing", Homebase will magically also have zero stock of their weirdly dimensioned version, too!!

B&Q at least might (depending on the flip of a coin) have stock of the shoddy cheap junk you're after.... and if you ask the right assistant, they may even know where they put it.... except in lightbulbs, where they can't find something even when they're stood right next to it!!

Powertools could be had for cheaper elsewhere and usually better versions. Materials, the same. Everything else was cheap enough, but you only got what you paid for and was only useful as a last moment grab if you forgot to order something from a more reputable place.


Could be much worse, though - We have a shiny, brand spanky new Toys-R-Us next doort to a shiny, brand spanky new Babies-R-Us.... neither of which has ever had a member of the public inside. I don't believe there's even been any stock on the shelves, as the main company went under before these actually opened!! :D

Bunnings, as a store, was a bloody miracle :)

I chose them over Wickes B&Q and Homebase every time. I have, in the last year purchased so many useful, well priced items there that when they decided to close the branch and convert it to Homebase, DR went there and purchased me a Bunnings Baseball cap, folding brolly and waterbottle.

And that, is a fact!

I cry every time I walk past Homebase.. its crap.

Homebase was profitable before Bunnings bun-ged it up.

Was hoping for some bark chips on sale but they're more expensive than at any other time. Hopefully an actual sale will happen.

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Originally Posted by tekmon

Was hoping for some bark chips on sale but they're more expensive than at any other time. Hopefully an actual sale will happen.

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I noticed that too!!!

I went to Homebase for a couple of bathroom cabinets. They were fairly expensive but good enough for what we needed and I wanted to get hands on with them before buying which meant t'interweb wasn't really an option.

Whilst I was there I decided to have a gander at the powertools as my cordless drill is more effective when used as a hammer than as a drill. They had a display and I thought great, I can feel the build, the balance, see if it's a decent brand metal chuck and so on.

So half of them were in a locked, unlit glass cabinet in empty boxes. I couldn't even work out what product some of the boxes were for, never mind look at the features. The light was so poor the only thing I could make out was the sign stating the boxes were empty. The other half were atop this cabinet, roughly at the height of my nose. They were bolted down firmly to the top of the cabinet and so I felt like a child, unable to see them properly, unable to pick them up and therefore unable to make any kind of determination as to what I was really looking at. They'd already had to write them off as they appeared to have ruined them by bolting them down so I really can't see why some thick wire cable couldn't have been used to allow you to at least examine them before considering buying.

"Ask someone to examine one" you say. Okay, but it seems like they've laid off most of the staff. This was a Sunday - DIY day and there was no one to ask. And on top of that, without being able to even determine what I was looking at properly, how the hell am I supposed to know what to ask to look at? Beyond maddening and you're really way better off on the internet.

A simple security system where they pop open the drill, plant a tag in it and if it moves away from the drill section or through the normal sensors then alarms go off would work just fine and they might actually sell something.

These people are the architects of their own demise.

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Originally Posted by philehidiot

..as my cordless drill is more effective when used as a hammer than as a drill.....

The light was so poor the only thing I could make out was the sign stating the boxes were empty. The other half were atop this cabinet, roughly at the height of my nose. They were bolted down firmly to the top of the cabinet and so I felt like a child, unable to see them properly, ....They'd already had to write them off as they appeared to have ruined them by bolting them down s

"Ask someone to examine one" you say. Okay, but it seems like they've laid off most of the staff. This was a Sunday - DIY day and there was no one to ask.
.

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and you Sir, write with aplomb and comedy genius :)

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Originally Posted by Zak33

and you Sir, write with aplomb and comedy genius :)

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Why thank you. I use Grammarly.

Bit like Maplin's closing down sale. They were selling HDMI cables at 50% off - still £50 though. I laughed and went on my way.

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Originally Posted by Dashers

Bit like Maplin's closing down sale. They were selling HDMI cables at 50% off - still £50 though. I laughed and went on my way.

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I was once in PC World with my Dad and he was offered a HDMI cable. It was gold plated. My Dad asked "what's the difference between that and the standard one?" and got the reply "it's faster". My Dad nodded, I pissed myself. So it plays your TV programs at 1.5x the speed does it? Out of my way, parasite.

I get that bricks and mortar shops need to make a markup somewhere, but this level of taking the mick leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes me far less likely to look there at all.

I gave up on going to these sorts of shops a long time ago. Homebase is reasonably handy for things you want to see in person, but that's rare, and things like paints and varnishes never look like what they have on the tin (especially under their terrible lighting), so it's kinda moot anyway. I use ScrewFix a fair bit for when I need something quickly, but I'm getting more off ebay these days.

The only thing that puts me off online is the faff of having to go to the sorting office to pick up whatever delivery failed. Leaving a package in a "safe place" is a chargable extra for the Royal Mail, so they won't do it. I've been tempted to get a big parcel bin/box, but the metal ones are painfully expensive and you still have to put a huge ugly box on the front of your house.

We're pretty lucky in that our postie will happily leave with a neighbour and drop a note on an envelope and our neighbours are pretty happy to take deliveries.

last thing we got from homebase was 12 bags compost. I think 2 of them went mouldy. was used to fill in a hole in the garden.

the sand layer around here is about 6 foot below our garden. or it should be, but over the decades my dads dug the sand out and used it to make cement and concrete to rebuild the entire surrounding property wall, garden walls, and the shed. so a fair chunk of our garden is now 10 foot to rock, because theres no sand left.

last hole was to repoint the side wall.


back in the mid 80s my dad used to refill the garden holes with horse muck from the nearby stables on Upper Aughton road in Birkdale.

Was Red rum still there then, I cant remember? if so he made lovely tomatoes and peas :p

We used to have a local farmer who went round in a land rover door to door asking people if they'd like a bag of poo. We bought several.