How to buy a worktop without being stung: the route from first quote to signed-off installation

The six points where the law is on your side

Those six are not evenly spaced. Five of them are decided before a single slab is touched, which is the part that surprises people. By the time a worktop is fitted badly, most of the leverage a customer had was given away weeks earlier — in a deposit paid on signature, in a quote that never listed the cut-outs, in a contract with a company that turns out not to be the company sending the fitters.

One: establish who you are contracting with

A trading name on a van is not a legal entity. Neither is a website, a Google listing or an invoice header. The entity is the limited company or the sole trader whose name appears on the contract, and that is the only party your rights run against. The register at Companies House is free to search and shows incorporation date, registered address, current and resigned officers, previous company names, document images, mortgage charge data and insolvency information — enough, in about four minutes, to check the company exists and to see whether the name on your quote matches the name on the register.

The second half of the identity question is subcontracting, and it is the half nobody asks about. Kitchen retailers commonly buy stone from a specialist and resell it inside a kitchen package. That is a perfectly ordinary way to run a business, but it changes who is actually liable when a join opens up, and it changes how many diaries your installation date is competing for. Citizens Advice is unambiguous that you contact whoever arranged the work, even where they subcontracted it. Knowing that in advance is worth more than discovering it during a dispute.

• Ask for the full registered company name and number, and check it against the register yourself.
• Ask, in writing, who templates, who fabricates and who fits — and whether those are the same company.
• Ask for the geographical address. A trader has to give one before an off-premises or distance contract is concluded.
• Ask which insurers are on cover and for the policy numbers. Employers’ liability insurance is compulsory for firms with employees under the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969.

Two: read the quote as a legal document

Under section 230 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, where a trader makes an invitation to purchase, the total price of the product is material information: it must be given, or the manner in which it will be calculated must be given, with equal prominence, and additional charges have to be disclosed rather than dripped in later. Section 226 makes a misleading action an unfair commercial practice and section 227 does the same for a misleading omission. This regime replaced the 2008 unfair trading regulations for conduct from 6 April 2025.

Where the contract is concluded away from the trader’s premises or at a distance — which covers almost every worktop sale, because the trade is mobile and the survey happens in your kitchen — Schedule 2 to the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 lists what has to be supplied before you are bound. It includes the trader’s identity and geographical address, the main characteristics of the goods or services, the total price inclusive of taxes or how it will be calculated, additional charges, the arrangements for payment and performance and the time by which the trader undertakes to perform, the cancellation right and how to use it, the complaint-handling policy, any commercial guarantee, and dispute resolution.

Citizens Advice adds the practical layer: get it in writing, insist on a fixed price rather than a day rate, and check how long the quote is valid for and whether the figure includes VAT. None of that is exotic. It is simply the difference between three comparable numbers and three numbers that cannot be compared at all.

• Slab brand, range and thickness, named — not "quartz".
• Whether the area is quoted per square metre or per linear metre, and which.
• Every cut-out: sink, tap holes, hob, sockets, drainer grooves.
• Edge profile, upstands, splashbacks, and whether they are included or extra.
• Template visit, delivery, installation, removal and disposal of the old top.
• VAT position, and the validity period of the quote.

Three: decide when the money moves

This is the single most consequential decision in the whole purchase and it is made in about five seconds, usually by signing whatever was put in front of you. Citizens Advice advises pushing a deposit down as far as possible and not agreeing to more than 25%. There is no statutory protection scheme for a home-improvement deposit — no equivalent of tenancy deposit protection — so the only real protections are a trader-held deposit insurance policy, a genuine escrow arrangement, or paying by credit card so that section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes the card provider jointly and severally liable with the trader.

The worktop-specific point, which no general consumer page makes, is that the template visit is the natural trigger. A template is a survey. Nothing has been cut, no slab has been consumed and nothing is irreversible until the fabrication starts, so a payment schedule of deposit at template and balance before installation puts the customer’s money in only once there is a physical commitment on the other side. That is our own schedule, and the reasoning is structural rather than generous. The longer answer on how much deposit is normal, on what deposit insurance and escrow actually are, and on the £100 and £30,000 limits that bound section 75, is a separate page.

Four: know whether you can still walk away

Regulation 29 of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 gives a right to cancel certain contracts, and regulation 30 sets the normal period: for a service, 14 days after the day the contract is entered into; for goods, 14 days after they come into your physical possession. Regulation 31 extends that period where the trader failed to give the required cancellation information, potentially by up to twelve months. Regulation 36 stops a trader beginning a service inside the cancellation period without your express request, which for an off-premises contract has to be on a durable medium.

And then regulation 28 takes it away again in the case that matters most here. Cancellation does not apply to the supply of goods made to the consumer’s specifications or clearly personalised — the made-to-measure exemption. Whether a particular worktop contract falls inside it depends on facts: whether it is characterised as goods or services, when the specification was fixed, and whether the slab has been cut. That fork is important enough to have its own page, which sets out the rule, the timing and the factors that bear on it. Do not assume from a headline that you can cancel the order, and do not assume from a salesperson that you cannot.

Five and six: the two visits, and what happens if it is wrong

The template visit and the fitting visit are where the job becomes physical. Between them sits manufacturing time — ours is three to seven working days from template — during which the specification is fixed and a change means a remake rather than an amendment. Have the sink, tap and hob in the room on template day, have the units fixed and levelled, and read the template drawing before it leaves. Join positions, drainer grooves and cut-out sizes are agreed there, not later.

If the finished work is not right, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is the instrument. Section 49 implies a term into every contract for a service that the trader will perform it with reasonable care and skill; section 52 implies performance within a reasonable time. The remedies have an order. Section 55 gives a right to repeat performance — the trader redoes the service at its own cost, within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to you. Section 56 gives a right to a price reduction, which can run to the whole price, but it is available where repeat performance is impossible, or where the trader has not provided it in a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience. That order is not decoration, and the page on what you can demand explains why treating it as a menu weakens a claim.

Sitting alongside all of that is the guarantee, which is a different animal from a statutory right. Under section 30 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 a guarantee takes effect as a contractual obligation of the guarantor, must be in plain and intelligible language, and must state that the consumer’s statutory rights are not affected by it. A material warranty from a slab manufacturer and a workmanship guarantee from an installer are two documents covering two different failure modes, and conflating them is how a customer ends up holding a twenty-five-year certificate that says nothing about the join that opened. There is a page on what the warranty actually covers.

Questions people actually ask

What to take away

• Five of the six protections in a worktop purchase are exercised before anything is cut. By the time the stone is in, most of your leverage was decided weeks earlier.
• Establish the legal entity, and establish who templates, fabricates and fits. Your contract runs against whoever arranged the work, subcontracted or not.
• A quote must give the total price, or how it is calculated, with equal prominence, and disclose additional charges. Get it in writing and fixed.
• There is no statutory deposit-protection scheme for home improvements. Deposit insurance, escrow and card protection are the only routes, and Citizens Advice advises not agreeing to more than 25%.
• The remedy ladder has an order: repeat performance under section 55 first, price reduction under section 56 where repeat performance is impossible or not delivered properly.

Sources

Every figure quoted above is traceable to one of these. Where a source is a price survey rather than our own quoting, it is named as such in the text.

1. [1]Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 49 — service to be performed with reasonable care and skill — legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 25 August 2026
2. [2]Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 230 — invitation to purchase and material information — legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 25 August 2026
3. [3]Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, Schedule 2 — legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 25 August 2026
4. [4]Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, regulation 28 — circumstances excluding cancellation — legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 25 August 2026
5. [5]Before you get building work done — quotes, deposits and insurance — Citizens Advice, retrieved 25 August 2026
6. [6]Firms which took customers’ deposits but didn’t fit their kitchens are shut down — Insolvency Service, GOV.UK, retrieved 25 August 2026
7. [7]If you need more help about a consumer issue — the consumer helpline — Citizens Advice, retrieved 25 August 2026