Victoria Plum Has Gone: What Happened, and Where It Leaves Anyone Who Bought From Them
Administration in September 2023, a pre-pack sale, then a purchase by its biggest rival — and on 1 November 2024 the shop stopped taking orders altogether. If you are searching for this because of a guarantee, a spare part or a refund, the answer is not simple, and this page is about that rather than about bathroom suites.
The short answer
You cannot buy from Victoria Plum, and the company that sold you your bathroom no longer exists as a going concern. That is the whole answer to "is it any good", and everything else follows from it.
If you are chasing a guarantee, the position is genuinely unclear. Victoria Plum’s own-brand extended guarantees — one, three, five and ten years on Clarity, Kirke, Mode, Orchard and The Bath Co products — only applied if you actively registered within 30 days of an email sent 31 days after delivery. Without that registration you had 12 months. We could not establish who, if anyone, honours those extended guarantees now, and we are not going to guess.
If you lost money in the 2023 administration, customers who had paid but not received goods got neither the goods nor a refund from the company, and recovered only through card chargebacks where their bank allowed it. Suppliers and installers became unsecured creditors.
If you are shopping for a bathroom now, this page is not the one you need. But the history is worth two minutes, because the ASA upheld complaints against this business twice — including one about the discounting style that is still standard across the sector.
The retailer at a glance — historical
| What | Detail | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Ceased trading 1 November 2024. Original company still in administration | Victoria Plum Limited, company number 04177694, entered administration 29 September 2023 with EY appointed. |
| Who owns the name | Victorian Plumbing, since May 2024 | A different company with a confusingly similar name. It bought the business for around £22.5m and closed it within six months. |
| What they sold | Bathroom suites, showers, baths, taps, furniture and tiles | Own brands: Clarity, Kirke, Mode, Orchard and The Bath Co. |
| Delivery, as last published | Free over £399; £14.99 and up below that | Express from £19.99. Room of choice was a £20 upgrade, and pallet items carried an explicit kerbside caveat — worth remembering when comparing any bathroom retailer. |
| Returns, as last published | 14 days, and you paid the return carriage | Their own help article was titled "Why do I have to pay to return my items?". Made-to-order items could not be returned or exchanged at all. |
| Guarantee, as last published | 12 months unless you registered | Extended 1, 3, 5 and 10-year cover on own brands required active registration within 30 days of an email sent 31 days after delivery. Miss it and you had 12 months. |
| ASA rulings upheld | Two — May 2018 and May 2024 | One on "was/now" discounting, one on claims made after the administration. Both detailed below. |
What buyers report
| Platform | Score | Sample size | Checked | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reviews.io (victoriaplum-com) | 1.6 / 5 | 98 reviews | checked 1 Sep 2026 | Latest review 9 August 2024, shortly before closure. 14% recommend. |
| Reviews.io (legacy victoria-plumb) | 1.2 / 5 | 504 reviews | checked 1 Sep 2026 | 5% recommend. Recent "positive" entries are crypto-recovery spam and should be discounted entirely. |
| Trustpilot | Not available | — | checked 1 Sep 2026 | The old Victoria Plum page now resolves to Victorian Plumbing. Any 4-point-something score you find at that address belongs to the acquirer, not to this retailer. |
A score without a sample size tells you nothing, so we publish both — and say when a platform is one the retailer pays for or curates.
What actually happened
29 September 2023. Victoria Plum Limited entered administration, with Timothy Vance and Samuel Woodward of EY appointed. The business and assets were bought in a pre-pack by AHK Designs Ltd, an affiliate of Giomani Designs, the group behind Beds.co.uk and Cox & Cox. Around 300 staff transferred.
The customer consequence of a pre-pack is the part worth understanding, because it recurs across retail. The buyer acquires assets, not liabilities. People who had paid for bathrooms that had not arrived got neither goods nor refunds from the company; those who had paid by card could try a chargeback through their bank, and those who had not were unsecured creditors along with suppliers and installers.
May 2024. AHK sold the business to Victorian Plumbing — the rival whose name has been confused with it for two decades — for about £22.5m.
15 August 2024. Closure was proposed, with around 100 jobs at risk. 1 November 2024, in Victorian Plumbing’s own words, "the Victoria Plum business ceased to trade and stopped accepting new orders". Traffic was redirected to victorianplumbing.co.uk. Victorian Plumbing booked £8.2m of exceptional costs, and its operating profit fell 27% to £11.2m on revenue of £295.7m for the year to 30 September 2024.
There has been no relaunch. Victorian Plumbing has since been reviving the MFI name instead.
The two ASA rulings, and why they still matter
16 May 2018. The Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about a "save up to 70%" claim — a Mode Ellis bath advertised at £379 down from £1,299. The price had moved between four different prices in three months, and the £1,299 had been in place for only 27 days against 35 days at £899. So £1,299 was not the usual selling price, and the saving was not the saving.
That ruling is worth keeping in mind for any bathroom retailer, not just this one. Permanent was/now discounting is standard across the sector, and a "was" price that held for under a month is not a price anybody paid.
22 May 2024. The ASA upheld a second complaint, this time against AHK Designs trading as Victoria Plum, on all three points: "Since we were founded in 2001", "Rated 'Excellent' on Trustpilot" and "2M+ customers served". All were misleading, because the business had gone into administration, had failed to fulfil orders, and had been bought as assets rather than as a going concern. A pre-pack buyer inherits the name and the marketing; it does not inherit the track record.
What buyers said, and how much weight to give it
Be careful with the numbers in the table above. The large-volume review record for this retailer is effectively unreadable now: the Trustpilot page for Victoria Plum resolves to Victorian Plumbing, so anything you find there describes a different company. What we could read is a 1.6 from 98 on one Reviews.io profile and a 1.2 from 504 on the legacy one — and the recent "positive" entries on the legacy profile are crypto-recovery spam, which is a fair sign of an abandoned listing rather than a live one.
The recurring complaints across both, and they are consistent: damaged, incomplete or misdelivered orders; customer service that could not be reached; refund delays running past two weeks, with some buyers going to small claims; missing components and early failures.
What we will not do is tell you most customers were unhappy. Those samples are small relative to a business that claimed millions of customers, and they are weighted towards the end, when a collapsing retailer generates exactly this kind of review. No substantive positive themes survive in the accessible samples — but that is a statement about what we could read, not about the whole customer base.
Before you order, check
- If you have an unregistered Victoria Plum guarantee, you likely had 12 months from delivery rather than the headline 10 years. Check your original paperwork for whether you completed the registration email.
- If you are chasing a claim, your contract was with a company now in administration. Citizens Advice is the right place to ask about your position; a card chargeback or a Section 75 claim through your card provider may be the practical route.
- Do not confuse Victoria Plum with Victorian Plumbing. Similar names, different companies. The second bought and then closed the first.
- For any bathroom retailer, read the returns page before the product page. Who pays return carriage, what the window is, and whether made-to-order items can be returned at all — that is where this sector disappoints people.
- Treat a permanent "was" price with suspicion. The ASA has upheld complaints about exactly this. Ask how long the higher price actually held.
Where this came from
- Companies House Victoria Plum Limited, company 04177694 — administration filed 29 September 2023, still listed in administration, accounts to 28 February 2023 never filed · checked 1 September 2026
- Advertising Standards Authority Both upheld rulings — the May 2018 was/now pricing case and the May 2024 case against AHK Designs · checked 1 September 2026
- Victorian Plumbing Its own help page confirming Victoria Plum ceased trading and stopped accepting orders on 1 November 2024, plus the results showing the £8.2m exceptional costs · checked 1 September 2026
- kbbreview The pre-pack detail — AHK Designs, the Giomani connection and the staff transfer · checked 1 September 2026
- Reviews.io Both buyer-review profiles, with the scores and sample sizes quoted in the table above · checked 1 September 2026
What we could not check
- We could not establish who honours the extended own-brand guarantees now, or whether spare parts are available for Clarity, Kirke, Mode, Orchard or The Bath Co products. If you have a claim, that is the question to put to Victorian Plumbing and to your card provider rather than assuming either way.
- The live state of victoriaplum.com is genuinely ambiguous. Some fetches still returned Victoria Plum-branded pages while search results showed Victorian Plumbing content at the same addresses, and we could not perform a definitive check. The company statement that it ceased trading is the fact we are relying on.
- Restocking fee amounts, the product count and the final prices are not verifiable now that the shop is closed. The delivery, returns and guarantee terms above are as last published and are history, not a live offer.
- No Feefo profile was found, and Which? has no Victoria Plum review. The Trustpilot record is unreadable because the URL now resolves to the acquirer.
- We have not seen the administrators’ progress reports, so nothing here should be read as a statement about what any creditor will recover.
- This page is a summary of public filings and reporting, not legal or financial advice. If money is at stake, Citizens Advice is the place to start.