Stoves Are Us 

Just received my fire and I love it. The people on the phone advised me what black box to buy as they all looked the same to me. They even advised me lead times on items I liked but they didn't have in so I wasn't waiting till next year to use it. They gave me this website I could find a fitter by putting my postcode in.

Pros: Cheapest on market, lots of choice and friendly
Cons: Still took 10 days to come even thought it was in stock, but they did say 7-10 days

Ordered a Gallery fireplace from them and was very pleased by the pricing. As someone else commented, there was not much information on delivery times and no way of selecting express delivery so I ended up calling and placing an order that way. The lady with whom I placed the order was polite and helpful.
The fireplace turned up on the day expected and the delivery folks called ahead of time to check that it was still OK to deliver. Excellent!
Unfortunately they sent us incorrect tiles and claim that our order was for the ones sent (which were completely different from the ones listed on the item ref on their web site). As it was a phone order, and as their email reciept contained no details other than the item number for the whole fireplace set, I had no proof that they had got it wrong (other than that the ref number describes the correct tiles on their web site). Their attitude was totally unsympathetic.
We are pretty narked that we now have to order another set (£85 plus delivery). I will not be ordering these from them and will never use Stoves Are Us again. We have three other fireplaces to replace and will also be buying a wood burner stove, so they've lost what I assume is some good business.

Pros: Price and availability of stock. Pleasant and helpful sales person.
Cons: Very poor customer service when things go wrong.

After phoning Stovesareus at the beginning of December 2008 and being informed that a batch of Carron stoves including red ones would be delivered around the middle of January we placed our order promptly to ensure that one of those stoves would be ours.

We received an email acknowledging the order and then heard nothing further, although payment was taken immediately. January came and went – we heard nothing – so in mid February we phoned to find out what was happening. We were then told that an order would be due in March.

We phoned Carron and discovered that no order was expected until April. Further the order that we were told by Stovesareus was due in January didn't exist – there were no deliveries in January! At the end of April we phoned Carron again and discovered that there had been a further delay and that the stove would be with us by the end of May! It has to be emphasized that all of this information was offered by Carron and at no stage did Stovesareus phone or email to keep us informed.

When we discovered from Carron that a delivery of stoves had arrived we phoned Stovesareus and were told that we would hear within 48 hours when delivery would take place. On Friday 22nd May nearly 6 months after our order and payment an attempt was made to deliver however as we hadn't been informed there was nobody at home to take delivery. Finally on Monday 25th May delivery was made – however the registry plate and stove pipe hadn't been dispatched they are apparently on their way now but this has been one of the most appalling on-line purchase experiences imaginable and Stovesareus have proved to be a couple of steps behind the game all the way through except when they took their payment nearly six months before delivery was made......

Pros: Website gives information on a wide range of stoves
Cons: Website gives very little information on availability or lead times for stoves. Customer service is a joke. Although the staff have been reasonably friendly and sympathetic when we have called there has been no effort to keep us informed of the order process or any problems along the way and indeed much of the information has been misleading and inaccurate. The only aspect that was handled efficiently was the immediate payment that was taken at the time of the order.