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About Us
Mandarin Stone was founded by Alma Small in 1989, almost by accident... she was approached by the owner of a roofing slate company to market a large consignment of flooring slate. Nearly twenty five years later the company remains within the Small family and every member plays a key role. Set in the rolling hills of Monmouthshire, Mandarin Stone has grown considerably over the years. It has several warehouse sites in Monmouth together with ten inspirational showrooms throughout the UK, located in Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Exeter, Marlow, Monmouth, Weybridge and Wilmslow as well as Cambridge which opened June 2013. As a UK market leader within the natural stone industry, Mandarin Stone have carefully formulated an extensive product range to offer design concepts for both residential and commercial projects. Over 100 different lines including Limestone, Marble, Slate, Travertine, Sandstone, Schist, Terracotta, Granite, Basalt and an ever expanding portfolio of Porcelain, Ceramic, Decorative & Glazed tiles, are imported and stocked to high levels, allowing them to be delivered within short lead-times.
Services Provided
Retailer and Supplier of over a 100 different lines of tiles.
Areas Served
Showrooms in: Bath Bristol Cambridge Cardiff Cheltenham Exeter Marlow Monmouth Weybridge Wilmslow
Category
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Business Details
Business Name
Mandarin Stone
Phone Number
07714 755885
Website
Address
Monmouth, Monmouthshire NP25 5JB
United Kingdom
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Write a Review
9 Reviews for Mandarin Stone
Newest first
Average rating: 3.4 out of 5 stars3.4|9 reviews
Work Quality5.0
Communication5.0
Value5.0
EMMANUELLE SIRVEN LTD
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Great products: original, affordable and very good quality!
I really like working with Mandarin Stone as they have a lovely selection which allows great design!
20 July, 2021
I had a great experience with this company. I used the large format Tone tiles for the kitchen and large format Lumi tiles for the bathroom floor and walls, and the quality is beautiful. I was a bit short in the number of tiles I ordered, and extra were ordered and dispatched to me within a few days. I found the customer service really good. I'm really impressed, and would definitely use them again.
11 May, 2020
Stephanie West
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Mandarin Stone are the most wonderful company to deal with. They are salt of the earth people. Not only are their tiles beautiful, they are so helpful. They give brilliant advice in their shops, we met Bethan in Bristol and Sammy in North London who went above and beyond to help us choose. Our builders chose to continue our house renovation during Corona, and thank goodness we chose Mandarin Stone, as they continue to deliver, advise and help change orders, with grace and humour despite all the challenges of Corona. Rhiannon in Monmouth HQ and Jordan and Ella online, the team are lovely people and I give them FIVE STARS. Most important of all, they are great value and quality.
24 April, 2020Last modified:24 April, 2020
Steve Moss
Average rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Mandarin Tiles have an excellent showroom with a wide choice of lovely tiles. I am very pleased with the tiles we have chosen but I later found that 4 were broken by the delivery driver when the palette tipped on a slope. I didn't unpack the tiles until well after the 7 day period in which you are supposed to report breakages . It is not realistic to have to unpack and examine every tile before you need to actually fit them. Mandarin Tiles were unwilling to help without return of broken tiles. The tiler managed to utilise the broken pieces but we still needed one to be replaced. I think it would have been reasonable to supply one free of charge ( I had spent nearly £5k on tiles) but they refused. In addition I had to pay another £30 delivery charge for one tile. I will be using Castellnau tiles for the next part of my renovation which involves another £5k order.
13 August, 2019
Charlotte Downs
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars
I bought beautiful tiles and sanitary ware from Mandarin Stone over 5 years ago. The quality is undeniable, they've also helped me on subsequent orders when I've needed extras.
10 May, 2019
Gill Downey
Average rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Beautiful tiles but company seems to be living on its high profile advertising as sadly we found customer service to be archaic.
Staff generally seemed uninterested in us or our project. When we asked if they offered a design service were told in no uncertain terms that they were suppliers only.
Check measurements carefully as they do not take returns even of full boxes.
Watch out for delivery terms. They just say delivery between 9-5.30. Requested a call an hour before delivery but that was ignored so had to wait in all day. This is so out of date with modern practice that there really is no excuse for it.
They blamed lack of scheduling on the delivery company when in fact it is of course driven by the contract that Mandarin have specified with that company.
They deliver by pallet to nearest flat surface which in our case was the drive way. For blocks of flats this could be the pavement so plan help if you have any steps at all. Delivery by pallet is understandable for heavy tiles but driver could not wait for us to unload so you then have to work out how to dispose of the pallet.
Driver was in a hurry to move on so we had to check tiles next morning. One broken so as per instructions we called with request for replacement. Sent in photos. Assured it would come in 3 days. 5 days later rang to chase delivery. Had to call 3 times whilst they prevaricated as to whether they would send replacement. Then had a very condescending email saying they would send it but we should have told them within 7 days. Totally ignored their own failed delivery.
Suggest that senior team need to take a real hard look at staff training, staff attitude and their companies ethos to customers. At present it is appalling.
12 July, 2018
Julie Brown
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars
The shop itself is fantastic to look around with big sections of flooring on display, not just a few tiles. The staff are lovely and very helpful. Products amazing and delivered quickly. We will use them again for all our future projects. Oh and a very competitive price.
22 March, 2018
Tiles are gorgeous!
Having read the previous review about the delivery it rings very true. We ordered 18 tiles - quite large but not gigantic. Delivery cost us over £60, or just over £3 per tile. Which is absolute extortion, but I really liked the tiles! For this, they will not even confirm a time of day for delivery.
I had realised from reading the terms that delivery was to the kerbside but figured as there weren't very many that I could probably manage them up one flight of stairs to my flat. Expected them to come in a couple of cardboard boxes with bubble wrap, like for every other tile company.
When they turned up, however, they were in the biggest pallet you have ever seen. A proper crate thing made of planks of wood, of which about 90% was empty space and 10% was tiles. As I doubt Dwayne Johnston himself would have been able to lift the crate off the ground, I had to break apart this massive thing and pull each tile out individually, then carry them each up the stairs. Thank goodness there were only 18!
After over 20 trips up the stairs, I am feeling far less positive about the company. Looks to me like they really have to look at their delivery policies!
26 January, 2018
One of the worst companies to deal with.
I am writing this review to warn others of the experience we had with Mandarin Stone. They portray themselves as an upmarket company, but provide a third class service. We paid for delivery, which we assumed would be the same way as when we ordered our samples, but it seems they use third party delivery companies which do not have insurance to handle their goods so they just basically prefer to dump them on the pavement.
This was not highlighted too well. Apparently it was in the email sent to us, but in the email the main bit highlight was to check our address and to make sure they got our order right. The information about the delivery was buried under the massive email disguised as Q&A about delivery - so we didn’t realise that it was something where they just would not deliver through the door and instead would insist on leaving it outside on the pavement. We are currently dealing with DeVol who have made it very clear how their delivery work and how much their delivery guys can carry or what they won’t carry.
As I was alone in the house and I am a petite woman, I could not carry those heavy tiles into the house and therefore had no choice but to refuse delivery. After I refused delivery, I called Mandarin Stone’s Cheltenham branch and their store manager, Helena answered. I was expecting to resolve this impasse by perhaps paying for a service that would deliver the items through my door to the house, but instead I was treated with the utmost unprofessional manner. The woman, Helena, was extremely condescending and rude and had absolutely no interest in resolving the issue or hearing me out, instead she complained that now they will be charged by the delivery company and that how terrible it was for their company - no regards to me trying to resolve this delivery issue. I explained to her that since we are in the middle of house renovations, this is the first time a company has refused to put goods down inside the house. We have recently purchased tiles from Fired Earth and they had no problems with delivering inside our house to which she called me a liar. Which was extremely rude, because I was telling the truth!
By now I was sure that this lady was not very helpful. I also told her that we were still waiting for the refund of our sample tiles which had come broken to which she said this “Tiles break. OK? That’s the nature of things”. So when I explained to her that in fact the samples were sent without any bubble wrap she said “oh didn’t realise that!”. I knew she wasn’t going to help me so I asked her if there was someone else I could speak with to which she replied “It’s just me and I was going got take it to the top guy for you, but never mind” so I asked her if she could just give me the number and I could talk to her top guy myself, she then just hung up on me!
During this horrible phone call, someone from the Mandarin branch had called me and left an aggressive voice mail for refusing their delivery.
I called up their head office and by now I was very emotional and decided that if this is the way Mandarin Stone treat their customers BEFORE they have had their item, they are probably not likely to be helpful in case of things going wrong with their products. I had noticed that when the delivery man had arrived, he wanted me to sign a piece of paper to say that after I sign the paperwork and find any tiles broken then Mandarin Stone does not take responsibility for them. Considering there were a few hundred tiles to be checked, they were packed, the man did not want to wait around, and the fact that our sample tiles had come broken, I wasn’t sure what to make of that paperwork. The third party delivery guy was in the rush to leave as well.
A man called ‘Sam’ called me and introduced himself as the “director” and tried to flatter me by saying that we had such wild and amazing taste for ordering the tiles we did and that he would like to see photos of the completed work “if we choose to go ahead with our purchase”, then he said that he is not trying to make money from me, so if I wanted to cancel the order it would be fine, but that I should think about it. So I said that’s fine. He promised to call in half hour but an hour later he rang and left a voice mail. I was busy with work, but before long, he was trying to call me again. I think only 15 minutes had passed since he had left me a voice mail. My husband and I had decided by now that we did not want to go ahead with the order because their customer service had left us with doubts about their quality of service and products. My husband called Sam and told him that we would like to cancel our order, which is our right per law as online sales come under Distance Selling (https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesses). As a buyer, we have 14 days to cancel our order if we wish to do so. After my husband told him that we wished to cancel our order, he told us a story about how it will take days before our refused delivery would make its way to Mandarin Stone and how difficult and inconvenient it was for him, but that we should think about it again.
We emailed them to convey our wish to cancel this order in writing. The next day, we hadn’t heard anything form them so in the afternoon we called again. During this time, we had already spoken with our credit card company and knew that we were entitled to a refund minus the delivery cost. Sam became very aggressive on the phone and told us that he wanted to charge us extra. According to him the distance selling doesn’t apply to him that the Government is wrong. Long story short, he was very unpleasant and would not let us get a word in. We told them about the Unfair Terms Act and he told me to keep my voice down! In the end, he suddenly changed his tone to say “life is too short, you can have your refund” and we ended the call on that. Right after we hung up, our door bell rang, it was Mandarin Stone delivery guy!! he was told to deliver the goods to us again! even though we had told them we did not want them. The delivery guy had picked up the goods from Mandarin Stone, so not sure about this story Sam told us about having to wait for days before Mandarin Stone could have their items back.
My advice to anyone looking to buy tiles is to please look elsewhere. The way this company behaves may work with trade customers, but no one else. Also it occurred to me that if you are in any shape or form incapable of lifting heavy tiles, the company is discriminating against you by not offering a delivery service in which an insured driver can deliver the goods inside your house. Most companies, Mandarin Stone is trying to compete with, including Fired Earth, actually offer proper insured deliveries. If Mandarin Stone is cutting corners on delivery cost, it gives me very little confidence in their product quality and therefore my advice to all would be to take your money elsewhere.
We are still waiting for written confirmation of our refund. So far nothing has been sent to us.
3 November, 2017Last modified:18 April, 2024
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