Livinghouse

Thank you, Michael - Glad we could help you achieve your design!

We would like to take this opportunity to defend ourselves against various claims suggested here.

This order for 7 towel rails in natural unfinished brass was placed with Livinghouse in February 2018. The order was discussed, quoted, finalised and invoiced to an architect (name withheld for his privacy). At no point have we had any dealings with Sarah Davison.

Natural unfinished brass towel rails are supplied without any protection so that they intentionally develop a patina over time. Our website clearly states that these products will tarnish and will require periodic polishing and maintenance.

We were contacted by the architect in February 2019, 10 months after the towel rails were delivered, to report that his client did not like the tarnishes that were developing on the rails.

After discussions with the architect, Livinghouse quoted a price to have these rails lacquer protected. This again was invoiced directly to the architect.

The rails were then returned to us, and we sent them on to a professional spray shop to be lacquered and then shipped them back to our customer.

The first time we received contact from Sarah Davison was 6 weeks after re-delivery of the lacquered rails. She told us the towel rails were the “wrong” colour Brass and did not match the other brassware in her bathrooms. Her other brassware was not from Livinghouse and we have no knowledge their appearance. Our towel rails are made of real brass.

Ms Davison now requested to change the colour of all seven towel rails to a black painted finish. We offered to look into the viability of this option, but our factory advised us that it’s not recommended to powder coat over a lacquered finish, so we informed Ms Davison that we could not carry out this work for her.

She then requested that we manufacture seven new towel rails because she wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the joints. There is no problem with these joints, but she did not like the look of the silver solder.

Natural brass towel rails cannot be welded with brass; they are always brazed using real silver solder. These joints are clearly shown on our website, and the architect even emailed us a close-up photo from our website at the time of ordering, requesting that we use this type of joint (photo below).

The architect and his client were therefore aware of the appearance of silver solder joints prior to ordering, and Ms Davison made no complaint about their appearance until May 2019, having had the rails in her possession for over a year at this point.

We are also aware that at least two of these towel rails had been fully installed prior to being returned for lacquering as this was discussed with the architect at the time - this explains the tarnishing on these two rails.

This is an unfortunate situation as our customer’s end-client has repeatedly changed her mind on the finish of these bespoke-made towel rails long after delivery. We did our utmost to meet her needs, but when we could not help she threatened us with negative reviews.

Thanks for taking the time to pass on your feedback.

We’re sorry that you weren’t satisfied with the service you received from Livinghouse.

Customer satisfaction and convenience are important to us, so we ask for photographs in the first instance as we may be able to determine the problem without inconveniencing the customer by collecting the goods for inspection.

It appeared from your photographs that these were water marks on the towel rail, so we recommended that you attempt cleaning with a soft cloth as a first step. If the marks still remained, we would then collect the towel rail for further inspection.

You then requested that you instead wanted an immediate refund because you could buy a cheaper towel rail on the high street, so we arranged to collect the towel rail and issue you with a full refund.

Although you made clear that you would like the full refund before the goods were collected, we unfortunately cannot issue refunds until we’ve received the goods.

The refund was processed on the day the goods arrived back to us (7th December), using a same-day bank transfer. The towel rail was later inspected by our Quality Control team and the marks were buffed out with an e-cloth.

Please accept our apologies if you were unhappy with your experience. We have taken your feedback on board and will use it to improve our future customer service.