The Best UK Websites for DIY Products: Buy on the Return, Not the Price
Every one of these sites sells the same drill bits at roughly the same price. What separates them is what happens when you get it wrong. The law gives you fourteen days to change your mind — and, by default, it hands you the return postage. That single fact decides which site you should be using, and it is the one no DIY listicle mentions.
The short answer
Decision one: if it fits in the car, click and collect it — and you have solved the returns problem before it happens. Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 you get 14 days to cancel an online order (reg. 30), but reg. 35 is blunt about the bill: “the consumer must bear the direct cost of returning goods” unless the trader has agreed otherwise. Post a wrong-sized 5 kg bag of tile adhesive back and the postage can cost more than the adhesive. Collect it from a counter instead and the return is a five-minute drive and costs nothing. Screwfix quote collection “in as little as 1 minute”, Toolstation “in as little as 5 mins”, B&Q and Wickes 15 minutes — all free. This is the whole game for small items, and it is why we would send almost everybody to a trade counter first.
Decision two: for anything that will not fit in the car, you are buying a delivery service, not a product — so compare the delivery line, not the item. B&Q publish the clearest matrix we found: standard delivery £6, free over £100; large-item delivery £15, free over £500; bulk (grab lorry and pallet) from £35 on a £100 minimum. Screwfix charge £5 under £50, free from £50, with Sunday and pre-noon slots priced on top. Toolstation are free over £40. On a £45 order of heavy goods those three retailers differ by more than the price gap on the goods themselves.
Decision three: treat the Trustpilot column as noise, because it is. On the same day, from the same sector, we recorded Screwfix at 2.6/5 from 6,084 reviews and Toolstation at 4.7/5 from 566,297. Nobody who has used both thinks Screwfix is that much worse. What the gap actually measures is how systematically each retailer emails its customers asking for a review: Toolstation have collected ninety-three times the reviews of their nearest rival. A retailer that only hears from the angry gets an angry score. We have printed every figure with its sample size, as we always do, and then we have ignored them — and so should you.
And the correction that matters most. The 2021 version of this page recommended four sites. One of them, Building Supplies Online, went into administration on 20 June 2022 and was dissolved on 22 September 2023. We left a dead retailer on this page for four years. Details below, including what is now trading under that name.
Nine DIY sites, checked on 8 September 2026
| Site | Best for | Delivery | Click & collect | Unwanted return posted back | Trustpilot (sample) | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Screwfix screwfix.com · Kingfisher | Fixings, power tools, electrical, plumbing — the fast small stuff | £5 under £50; free £50+. Sunday £10/£5/free by band; pre-12 £10/£5/£5 | Free, “as little as 1 minute”, 979 UK stores | You pay. 30 days. Faulty: Screwfix pay | 2.6 / 5 6,084 reviews | Our default. Collection is the point; the low score is a sampling artefact |
| Toolstation toolstation.com · Travis Perkins | The same job as Screwfix, often a pound or two under | Free over £40. Fast Track from 30 mins via the app | Free, “as little as 5 mins”, 550+ stores | You pay, or £9 for collection. 30 days, unused and boxed | 4.7 / 5 566,297 reviews | Best delivery threshold here. Free at £40 beats Screwfix’s £50 |
| B&Q diy.com · Kingfisher | Bulky building materials, paint, garden, kitchens — the big shop | £6, free £100+; large £15, free £500+; bulk from £35 | Free, from 15 minutes, 317 stores | 90 days in store. Cut-to-size, made-to-measure and plants excluded | 3.1 / 5 35,058 reviews | The bulky-goods pick. Clearest published delivery matrix of the nine |
| Wickes wickes.co.uk · listed, ex-Travis Perkins | Timber, kitchens and bathrooms, building materials | From £5 (their own wording). Full matrix not published where we could read it | Free, “as little as 15 minutes”, 229 stores | Policy page unreadable to us — unverified | 4.4 / 5 74,953 reviews | Strong on timber and kitchens, but the least transparent site here on terms |
| Homebase homebase.co.uk · CDS Superstores | Garden and homeware; a brand that outlived its company | Not verified by us | Not verified by us | Not verified by us | 3.9 / 5 196,287 reviews | Trading, but not the Homebase you remember. See the section below before you order |
| ManoMano manomano.co.uk · marketplace | Long-tail and continental brands you cannot find elsewhere | Per seller — no single policy | None. No stores | You pay, and you are chasing a third-party seller | 3.1 / 5 12,227 reviews | Last resort. Refund delays and wrong items dominate the complaints |
| Amazon UK amazon.co.uk · mixed | Hand tools, consumables, next-day convenience | Prime or per-order; varies by seller | Lockers, not a counter — no advice, no bulky goods | Depends who sold it. Marketplace terms vary seller to seller | Not on Trustpilot in a form we could sample | Fine for small and boxed. Check the seller name before anything expensive |
| eBay UK ebay.co.uk · marketplace | Discontinued parts, used and reconditioned tools | Per seller | None | You pay if you changed your mind; seller pays if faulty or not as described | Not sampled by us | The place for obsolete parts and nothing else on this list does that |
| FFX ffx.co.uk · independent | Serious power tools and bare units at keen prices | Blocked to us — unverified | One counter (Kent) | Blocked to us — unverified | 4.6 / 5 109,149 reviews | Best-rated real sample here, but we could not read their terms — check them yourself |
Delivery, collection and returns read off each retailer’s own help pages on 8 September 2026; store counts for B&Q and Screwfix from Kingfisher’s full-year results for the year ended 31 January 2026, and for Wickes from Trustpilot’s own location count. Every Trustpilot figure was read on 8 September 2026 and is a moving number. Selco is missing from this table deliberately — it is trade-only, and we explain why below. Travis Perkins, Jewson, Wayfair, ITS and Tool Shop are missing because we ran out of budget to confirm their current terms, not because we found anything against them.
What the 2021 version of this page got wrong
The old post recommended four sites: B&Q, Screwfix, Wickes and Building Supplies Online. Three of those are still trading and still good advice. The fourth has been dead for four years, and we are not going to quietly delete the line.
Building Supplies Online collapsed in 2022
BSO entered administration on 20 June 2022, with David Shambrook and Sarah Cook of FRP Advisory appointed joint administrators. The Builders Merchants Journal reported stock availability issues and constraints on cashflow as the cause; all 13 staff at the Banbury head office were made redundant and the business ceased trading immediately. Companies House records Building Supplies Online Limited (07117640) as Dissolved on 22 September 2023. The company that our old page told you to buy from does not exist.
The name, though, is back — under different owners
Here is the part that would catch a reader out. building-supplies-online.co.uk is live today and taking orders, and it is not the same business. The site says it is “under new management and part of the Insulation4less Ltd family of websites”, alongside Build4less and Tiles4less, run from 207 Regent Street, London, claiming over 40,000 products and free-delivery thresholds of £130 to £1,500 depending on weight. We have not tested it and are not recommending it either way — but if you are working from an old bookmark, understand that the name survived and the company behind it did not.
And the framing was of its time
The old page spent its length on monitor colour calibration and payment options — real 2021 anxieties that have stopped being the problem. Nobody now picks a DIY site on whether it takes PayPal. What costs money today is the returns leg, which the old page never mentioned once.
Homebase: the brand outlived the company
Homebase is the most confusing name on this list, and the confusion is worth ten minutes of your attention if you are about to spend money there.
What happened
HHGL Limited and Hampden Group Limited, trading as Homebase, went into administration on 13 November 2024. Gavin Park, Gavin Maher and Adele Macleod of Teneo were appointed joint administrators. On the same day, CDS Superstores — the company behind The Range and Wilko — bought the Homebase brand, its intellectual property and up to 70 UK stores, saving roughly 1,600 jobs. About 2,000 staff at the remaining 49 sites were left in limbo.
What that means for you now
Two separate things carry the Homebase name today, and they are not the same shop.
The stores are being converted. Insight DIY reported CDS had converted 48 former Homebase locations to The Range format by May 2025, at a stated up to 10 superstores a month, targeting all 70; chief executive Alex Simpkin said acquired stores would “continue to trade throughout the transition period”. So the Homebase near you may already be a Range, may be about to become one, or may have gone.
The website is a deliberate relaunch — CDS said they were “investing in the Homebase brand with the relaunch of www.homebase.co.uk” — and when we fetched it on 8 September 2026 it was a working shop. Its Trustpilot score is 3.9/5 from 196,287 reviews, but Trustpilot describe that as covering 144 locations, so a large share of those reviews are historical: the old company, about shops that no longer exist under that name. It is the least current rating here.
Our position: the site trades and we have said so, but a brand bought out of administration with its estate actively being rebadged is not where we would place a large kitchen order. Buy small there, or buy elsewhere.
Who actually pays for the return
This is the column in our table we would read first, and the one almost nobody publishes plainly.
The legal floor
The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you 14 days from taking possession to cancel a distance contract (reg. 30). Regulation 35 settles the postage: “The consumer must bear the direct cost of returning goods… unless (a) the trader has agreed to bear those costs, or (b) the trader failed to provide the consumer with the information about the consumer bearing those costs.” Note exception (b) — if a retailer never told you that you would be paying return postage, they pay it. Worth knowing when you are being told otherwise on the phone.
What each retailer adds on top
Everything beyond 14 days is a voluntary gift, and they vary a lot.
- B&Q: 90 days, returned to any store in original condition with proof of purchase. Excluded: anything “cut to size, made to measure or mixed to your individual requirements”, plus perishables like plants and turf. That paint you had mixed is yours forever, and that is normal across the sector.
- Screwfix: 30 days to cancel, and you can do it by walking into a trade counter. Their terms are explicit both ways: you pay to send back an unwanted item, but “where the goods are being returned because they are faulty or incorrect, we will meet the cost of return delivery”. Within 30 days of a fault you have “a right to reject the goods and receive a full refund”.
- Toolstation: 30 days, unwanted items “unused, unmarked and in original packaging”. “Postage costs are only refunded for items that are faulty, damaged or sent in error” — or they will collect for a flat £9. Boilers, used macerators, toilets, dirty-water pumps, bespoke items and petrol products are excluded outright.
- eBay: the seller pays return postage “if the item was damaged, faulty, or doesn’t match the listing description”; you pay if you changed your mind and the seller’s policy says so.
The trick that makes all of this moot
Order online, collect in store, and the return leg becomes free. You are handing the item back over the counter you collected it from. No packaging, no courier, no postage argument, no waiting for a refund to clear. For anything you are unsure about — a fitting you have not measured, a tool you might not get on with — this is the single most useful habit on this page, and it costs nothing.
Why the Trustpilot scores tell you almost nothing
We have printed every rating with its sample size because that is the house rule. Having printed them, we want to be honest about what they are worth here: very little for comparing one retailer against another.
Look at the two nearest competitors in British DIY, checked within minutes of each other on 8 September 2026:
- Toolstation: 4.7/5 from 566,297 reviews. 84% five-star. Trustpilot record that they reply to 99% of negative reviews, typically within 24 hours.
- Screwfix: 2.6/5 from 6,084 reviews, rated “Poor”.
These two chains sell nearly the same catalogue to nearly the same customers from nearly the same kind of counter. A two-point gap is not a quality finding. It is a review-solicitation finding. Toolstation have gathered roughly 93 times as many reviews as Screwfix; a company that systematically invites every satisfied customer to rate it will float upward, and a company that does not will be rated mainly by the minority motivated enough to seek the site out unprompted — who are, overwhelmingly, the aggrieved.
The same pattern shows in the B&Q distribution: 3.1/5 from 35,058 reviews, but 49% of them one-star and 34% five-star. That is a barbell, not a bell curve — the shape you get when nobody is invited and only the delighted and the furious turn up. Trustpilot note B&Q reply to about 25% of negative reviews, typically within a week, against Wickes’ and Toolstation’s 99% within 24 hours.
What we would take from the scores instead: read the complaint themes, not the numbers. Across B&Q, ManoMano and Wickes the same theme recurs and it is not product quality — it is getting hold of a human when a refund goes wrong. That is a real, consistent signal, and it points the same way as everything else on this page: the risk in DIY retail is on the way back, not on the way out.
Marketplaces: cheaper until something goes wrong
ManoMano, and the third-party half of Amazon and eBay, are a different kind of purchase from the four chains above — and the difference only shows up at the refund stage.
ManoMano
3.1/5 from 12,227 reviews, and the complaint themes Trustpilot summarise are all post-purchase: refund delays and unexpected cancellations; orders late or never arriving; wrong items, wrong sizes and missing parts; stock listed that is not in stock, cancelled after payment is taken. One structural complaint stands out — that ManoMano is a marketplace of third-party sellers rather than a retailer, “making dispute resolution more complex”. That is not a bug in the service. It is what a marketplace is.
We would still use it for one job: a continental or long-tail item nobody else stocks. Not for a common part you could collect from a counter for the same money.
Amazon and eBay
Both are two businesses wearing one logo. An item sold and dispatched by Amazon behaves like a retailer; one from a marketplace seller behaves like ManoMano. Check the “sold by” line before buying anything you might send back — it is the only thing that decides whose returns policy you are agreeing to. We could not read Amazon’s own returns pages (robots.txt blocks automated fetching), so we have not quoted their terms rather than guess.
eBay earns its place for one thing the chains cannot do: discontinued and obsolete parts. A handle for a fifteen-year-old window, a carburettor for a dead strimmer. When the manufacturer has moved on, eBay is often the only market left.
Selco, and the trade counters you cannot actually use
Trade merchants get recommended in DIY roundups constantly, usually by people who have never been turned away from one. So, plainly: Selco is “exclusively for the Trade” and you need a trade card to buy. A member of the public cannot walk in and pay.
What is more interesting is how low the bar is. Selco issue a card immediately, with no waiting period, on one document from a list including a business card, letterhead or compliment slip; certificate of incorporation; company invoice; VAT certificate; company bank statement; CSCS card; tenancy agreement (for landlords); tenancy deposit protection certificate; or liability insurance certificate.
Read that again. A landlord with a tenancy agreement qualifies. So does anyone with a registered small business and a bank statement. If you hold one of those documents the trade counter is open to you and the bulk-materials prices are worth the errand. If you do not, no amount of confidence at the desk will help.
We have not verified current public-access terms at Travis Perkins or Jewson and so have not listed them. Both have historically been more open to retail customers than Selco, but we will not state a policy we have not read.
Where the market actually is, on the numbers
One reason to trust the trade counters with your small orders: that is where the investment has gone. Kingfisher’s results for the year ended 31 January 2026 give unusually clear figures for two sites in our table.
- Screwfix: £2,755m of sales, +3.2% like-for-like, 979 stores after 27 net openings, including 13 ultra-compact “City” stores with room flagged for up to 100 over time. Online is 59.4% of Screwfix sales, up from 58.2%.
- B&Q: £3,971m of sales, +3.3% like-for-like, 317 stores after 7 net openings — and note where they came from: 10 openings, of which 8 were converted Homebase sites. Online is 16.7%, up from 14.6%.
Two things follow. Screwfix is now an online retailer with 979 collection points — six pounds in every ten goes through the website, and the counter is the warehouse door. That is exactly the model our first decision rests on, and it is being expanded hard.
And B&Q grew its estate mainly by absorbing Homebase’s corpse. Kingfisher took 8 sites, CDS up to 70. Kingfisher call the wider market “flat on a full year basis, aided by favourable weather in H1” — a flat market in which the survivors divide the casualties’ property between them. That is UK DIY retail in 2026, and it is why we now check a site still trades before recommending it.
What the delivery line actually costs on a small order
| What | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Toolstation, £45 order | £0 | Free over £40. The lowest threshold of the four chains, and the reason we would check Toolstation first on a mid-sized order. |
| Screwfix, £45 order | £5 | Under the £50 threshold. Add a £5 item to cross it and delivery becomes free — you get more for the same money. Our arithmetic, not their advice. |
| Screwfix, £45 collected | £0 | Click and collect from any of 979 stores, quoted at “as little as 1 minute”. Also makes the return free. |
| B&Q, £45 standard delivery | £6 | Free only from £100. On small orders B&Q is the most expensive of the four to have things sent. |
| B&Q, one large item | £15 | Free over £500. This is the band most fence panels, doors and flat-packed units fall into. |
| B&Q, bulk load | from £35 | Grab lorry and pallet service, £100 minimum order, selected locations only. Kitchens ordered in store over £1,000 carry a separate £75 charge. |
| Toolstation collection of a return | £9 | Flat fee if you want an unwanted item picked up rather than posting it yourself. Free only if the item was faulty, damaged or sent in error. |
| The legal minimum anyone owes you | 14 days | Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, reg. 30 — and under reg. 35 the return postage is yours unless the trader agreed otherwise or never told you. |
Before you buy, check
- Can you collect it? If yes, collect it. Free at all four chains, quoted at 1 to 15 minutes, and it turns a possible return from a postage bill into a short drive.
- Does your basket clear the free-delivery threshold? £40 at Toolstation, £50 at Screwfix, £100 at B&Q standard. Adding a needed consumable to cross the line can genuinely cost less than paying the carriage.
- Is it cut, mixed or made to measure? Then it is not returnable at all — B&Q exclude anything “cut to size, made to measure or mixed to your individual requirements”. Measure twice before you have paint tinted or timber cut.
- On a marketplace, who is the seller? On Amazon and eBay the “sold by” line decides whose returns policy applies. On ManoMano it is always a third party.
- Is the item on Toolstation’s exclusion list? Boilers, used macerators, toilets, dirty-water pumps, bespoke and petrol products cannot go back under the standard 30-day policy.
- Were you told you would pay return postage? If the trader never gave you that information, reg. 35 puts the cost on them. Worth quoting if you are being resisted.
- Ignore the Trustpilot score; read the recent complaints. The score measures how hard the retailer asks for reviews. The complaint themes are the useful part.
- Is the Homebase near you still a Homebase? Up to 70 sites are being converted to The Range at up to 10 a month. Check before you drive.
Where this came from
- Legislation.gov.uk — Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, reg. 30 The 14-day cancellation period for distance contracts, and when the clock starts · checked 8 September 2026
- Legislation.gov.uk — Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, reg. 35 That the consumer bears the direct cost of returning goods, and the two exceptions that shift it to the trader · checked 8 September 2026
- Screwfix — home delivery The delivery price matrix by order band, cut-offs, and the 1-minute collection claim · checked 8 September 2026
- Screwfix — terms and conditions The 30-day cancellation right, who pays return postage, and the right to reject faulty goods · checked 8 September 2026
- Toolstation — returns information The 30-day guarantee, the £9 collection fee, the postage-only-if-faulty rule and the excluded products · checked 8 September 2026
- Toolstation — buying from us Free delivery over £40, the 5-minute collection claim and the 550+ store count · checked 8 September 2026
- B&Q — home delivery Standard £6 free over £100, large £15 free over £500, bulk from £35, and free collection from 15 minutes · checked 8 September 2026
- B&Q — returns and refunds The 90-day window and the cut-to-size, made-to-measure and perishable exclusions · checked 8 September 2026
- Wickes — delivery options Free collection in as little as 15 minutes, and the “from £5” claim — the only delivery figure we could read · checked 8 September 2026
- Kingfisher plc — full year results to 31 January 2026 B&Q and Screwfix sales, store counts, the 8 converted Homebase sites, e-commerce share and the flat-market statement · checked 8 September 2026
- Retail Gazette — The Range owner snaps up Homebase brand and stores The 13 November 2024 administration, the Teneo administrators, the CDS purchase and the 1,600 and 2,000 job figures · published 13 November 2024
- Insight DIY — The Range announces latest Homebase conversions 48 stores converted by May 2025, the 10-a-month rate, the 70-store target and the homebase.co.uk relaunch quote · checked 8 September 2026
- Homebase That homebase.co.uk is a live, working shop under CDS ownership · fetched 8 September 2026
- Builders Merchants Journal — Building Supplies Online ceases trading The 20 June 2022 administration, FRP Advisory, the cashflow cause and the 13 Banbury redundancies · checked 8 September 2026
- Companies House — Building Supplies Online Limited (07117640) The company status: Dissolved, 22 September 2023 · checked 8 September 2026
- Building Supplies Online That the domain trades again under Insulation4less Ltd, with the £130–£1,500 delivery thresholds · fetched 8 September 2026
- Selco Builders Warehouse — trade account types That Selco is trade-only, and the full list of accepted proof-of-trade documents · checked 8 September 2026
- eBay UK — return postage for buyers That the seller pays for faulty or not-as-described items and the buyer pays for change of mind · checked 8 September 2026
- Trustpilot — Screwfix 2.6 out of 5 from 6,084 reviews · checked 8 September 2026
- Trustpilot — Toolstation 4.7 out of 5 from 566,297 reviews, 84% five-star, 99% of negative reviews answered within 24 hours · checked 8 September 2026
- Trustpilot — B&Q 3.1 out of 5 from 35,058 reviews, the 49% one-star and 34% five-star split, 25% negative-reply rate · checked 8 September 2026
- Trustpilot — Wickes 4.4 out of 5 from 74,953 reviews, 14,050 in the last 12 months, and the 229 UK locations · checked 8 September 2026
- Trustpilot — Homebase 3.9 out of 5 from 196,287 reviews across 144 UK and Ireland locations · checked 8 September 2026
- Trustpilot — ManoMano 3.1 out of 5 from 12,227 reviews, and the complaint themes on refunds, delivery and marketplace disputes · checked 8 September 2026
- Trustpilot — FFX 4.6 out of 5 from 109,149 reviews · checked 8 September 2026
- Shopbam — the 2021 version of this page The original four recommendations, and its framing around monitor colour matching and payment options · fetched 8 September 2026
What we could not check
- We could not read Wickes’ delivery matrix or returns policy. Their delivery and returns pages returned navigation only and their Zendesk help centre blocks automated fetching. “From £5” comes from their own page title; nothing else about Wickes’ terms here is verified.
- We could not read Amazon’s returns pages at all — both the Free Returns and Marketplace Returns help pages are disallowed by their robots file. We left the Amazon returns cell vague rather than guess; their policy may be more generous than the legal floor.
- Homebase’s delivery, collection and returns terms are unverified by us. We confirmed the site trades and read its Trustpilot entry, nothing more. Given the ownership change, treat any pre-2025 account of Homebase’s terms as worthless.
- FFX’s delivery and returns pages blocked our fetch. Their 4.6/5 from 109,149 reviews is checked; everything else about them is not.
- Travis Perkins, Jewson, Wayfair, ITS and Tool Shop are not on this page because we ran out of research budget before confirming their current terms. Their absence is our limitation, not a judgement on them.
- Every Trustpilot figure is a single reading on 8 September 2026 and these move daily. Competing regional Trustpilot domains showed slightly different review counts for Screwfix on the same day; we used the UK figure.
- We have not tested any of these retailers ourselves. Every delivery cost, threshold and returns term here is the retailer’s own published claim — not something we put to the test with a real order and a real return.
- The revived building-supplies-online.co.uk is unassessed. We confirmed it is live and under Insulation4less Ltd from its own about text. We have not checked that company at Companies House or read its terms.
- Store counts date from different moments. B&Q’s 317 and Screwfix’s 979 are as at 31 January 2026; Toolstation’s “550+” is their own undated marketing figure; Wickes’ 229 comes from Trustpilot, not Wickes.
- The Homebase conversion count is from May 2025 — 48 sites against a 70-site target at 10 a month. At that rate it would be finished by now, but we found nothing confirming completion, so we cannot say how many Homebase-branded stores remain today.
- We have not verified whether Selco’s trade-card requirement is enforced at the counter, only what their help pages state.
Prices and specifications change constantly. Every figure here is dated — check the one in front of you before spending.