Installer speaks exclusively to Jen Cassidy, CEO of Bristan, about the company’s new game-changing lifetime guarantee for its range of taps and showers.
Q: What is the Bristan Lifetime Guarantee?
A: It is exactly what it says on the tin, it is a genuine lifetime guarantee. This is for the duration of the ownership of the product. And all we ask for is proof of purchase to validate it.
Q: How does the new guarantee differ from others on the market?
A: It’s true lifetime and broader than most guarantees out there. It covers parts, it covers finishes, it covers working components, including moving parts.
We believe it’s very simple and clear. We will repair, we will replace or we will refund products purchased from the 1 April 2026. If we no longer have the product available, then ultimately, we will refund the original purchase price. There’s no long list of exclusions or complicated small print in there.
Our customer support is industry-leading. If you go and look at any of the Trustpilot reviews, we are consistently five-star rated, so we do believe the offering is really credible.
Q: What products does the Lifetime Guarantee apply to?
A: It is everything residential, basically. So it’s bathroom taps, kitchen taps, mixer shower, valves, accessories. So that includes our hoses, our handsets, and rails. What is excluded is products installed in commercial applications, and our shower pumps and value range, which have their own guarantee period.
Q: Who can make use of the Lifetime Guarantee?
A: It’s the person who purchases the product. So, if that’s the installer, then absolutely they can claim that. But what we would anticipate is that the installer leaves the proof of purchase behind with the end customer, even if they’ve made the purchase, so that the guarantee is available to that end customer when they contact us.
We recommend that the installer leaves the proof of purchase with the customer, but it’s very rare that we’re not able to help the customer either find or locate that proof of purchase one way or another.
We’re not asking people to register in order to get this lifetime guarantee. We would absolutely encourage it to make it easier if they need to contact us in the future, but it’s not essential that they do.
Q: When is the Lifetime Guarantee applicable from?
A: Officially, it is from products purchased as of 1 April 2026.
As you see in reviews, our customer service team are empowered to do the right thing. They will have parameters. They will be allowed to make those decisions about what’s right and appropriate.
Q: How can installers and end users access the Lifetime Guarantee?
A: Literally pick up the phone to our customer service team. They will ask for proof of purchase and it’s simple from there.
Q: How do you see the guarantee benefiting installers?
A: It gives absolute peace of mind to the homeowner for the long term. And this is equally important for the installer. We know how important fit and forget is to them. And having a product that they know, once they’ve fitted it, if the customer needs to talk, they can contact us directly.
And for the first year, we also have a labour included on taps and showers. We will send one of our engineers out within the first 12 months to actually do any fixes or replace any products that are necessary. Again, from that installer point of view, they’re not having to go back to a homeowner and basically give their time for free, which nobody wants to do.
Q: Why have you launched the guarantee?
A: It really all starts with insight from our customers, both homeowners and installers. We’ve done a huge amount of research over the last year or so to really understand what matters to our customers and how we can best deliver on that. And what became clear was that the three things that really matter are quality, reliability and durability.
As we started to then explore who stood for that in the marketplace, we felt that there was a real gap. And as we looked at the guarantees that are out there, there’s a lot of quite flashy ‘25 years’, but then you start to look at the caveats and the small print that sits behind it. And we thought, actually, we can go and own this.
We want to be bold again and we want to do something different. We were the first to do next-day delivery approximately 20 years ago, and now we’re going to be the first to do a true lifetime guarantee, and that’s quite an exciting place for us to be as an organisation.
Q: Can you tell us about your plans for this year’s InstallerSHOW?
A: We’re hugely excited about InstallerSHOW this year. Last year we launched our biggest campaign in a long time, ‘You can with Bristan’. InstallerSHOW was a real focal point for us then and this year we’re going even bigger. What we’re showing is about who we stand for as a brand, which is incredibly exciting.
We’ll also be having a huge push around the Lifetime Guarantee. While it launches on the 1 April, there’s a long-term campaign and comms plan that sits behind this.
I also have to mention the fact that the finish line for Race for Change will be on our stand. We are expecting contestants to finish their journey during the event, so it will be incredibly exciting to be there to see them cross the finish line and who wins.And there will obviously be some surprises like there were last year with our amazing beer tap that we had.
Q: Any final thoughts?
A: I am incredibly excited about the statement we are making with Lifetime Guarantee. Ultimately, this is about backing what we make and supporting the people who rely on it. Our Lifetime Guarantee is simple – it gives the trade confidence to recommend and install, knowing we’ll stand behind our products for the long term. That’s the standard we believe the industry should be held to.
