Moen from Home Expo?

My wife picked up a Moen "Benton" faucet from Home Expo as part of our guest bath remodel. In looking on the internet for a matching tub/shower single handle setup I've found that the Benton series is only sold in places like HD, Home Expo and Ace Hardware. What's the difference in internal construction and/or finish quality between these units and the mainstream Moen pieces?

It's not too late to take the sink faucet back and buy something that's part of their standard line.

Rick

Generally big-box only models are cheap, construction wise. Someone here mentioned recently that the exact same model sold at a big-box had cheap guts.

MOEN is questionable

I recently got stung by DELTA when a customer
bought one at LOWES and it was totally a piece of
JUNK inside....it leaked from the get go
and could not easily be repaired.
but the faucet costs about 40 bucks
cheaper than what I get from the supply house...


Odds are that MOEN is doing about the same thing too
so they can compete with the Chinese and
Tiawaneese knock offs too..

Lowes

How could you get stung if the customer bought it? If the customer buys it, then I am on the clock until it is installed and working properly, even if I have to remove it and they return it for a replacement.

Moen does make a HD version (Home Expo is a part of Homer TLC, parent to Home Depot) and there are some differences. You can only get replacement parts at HD and the quality is lower. Contractors can get the real stuff, better quality, at the same price at a plumbing warehouse. I recently saved a client about $10,000 on a 106 room hotel. He wanted to get HD Moen and I sent him to the local plumbing house where he got comparable "real" moen. Happy client, plumbing house, and plumbers who had to install the stuff...

HJ their is a thousand ways to getting stung.....

When you advise a good freind to

"just go down to Lowes and pick out a good
Delta faucet in the style you want and I will put it in "


then you get stuck in the middle when it fails from the
get go.....


and your choice is to either burn time going 5 miles over
to LOWES and hope that they have the
cheap crummey stems for their cheap crummey faucet knock off.......


or you can simply go to 5 miles to your supply house
and get a REAL delta faucet.....and save yourself all the greif
and then charge the customer for the faucet...

and let the freind take the piece of junk back
to LOWES and get credit for it...


its your choice how you want to spend the rest of the day.

working for freinds......
thats just one way to get stung..

Some folks may be unduly harsh on the home stores. We all have our horror stories, of course

But I notice that the Benton uses the same 1224 cartridge as all 2 handle Moens. When a model is an exclusive like that, it may come in special packaging, it may have a plastic pop up, etc. etc. They do what it takes to meet a price point which the box store demands. But everyone is shopping price point these days. Bottom line is, Moen does put their name and their lifetime warranty on it. It is so hard to find solid quality these days AT ANY PRICE, that sometimes you just resign yourself to eating with chopsticks!


I was comparing some Elkay sinks recently. The box store brand was all machine finished, where the commercial version had some hand polishing, and was available in a variety of depths and hole combinations that the HD sink was not. Other wise, same sink. Same SS. Same warranty. Elkay was very forthcoming in explaining the differences to me, and as long as the one available depth was OK, only a stickler could see the difference in the finish, and why not take the one that is $130 cheaper??

Elkay finish

JIMBO....that sounds like a reasonable and normal atitude to take...

Get the cheaper Elkay for 130 less...

but will the Stainless Steel in that cheaper sink resist
stains and discoloration as good as the better quality
ELKAY from the supply house....

or will you get complaints on the quality in 6 months??

In our business, we give the homeowner the choice when it comes to HD product. If WE provide fixtures and faucets, they will come from a supply house, and we will deal with all warranty issues for a year. If the HO wants to buy cheap HD product, we'll install it, but we won't deal with warranty issues, and our time is not free to switch out faulty product. We only cover OUR work in that case. So far, 95% of my clients choose to pay a bit more for superior merchandise, and for the comfort of knowing that we stand behind the product we provide. We do this, because we have experienced the difference in quality at HD versus our supply house. HD product is just not as good, in our experience.

Elkay assured me that the steel was the same, just a slightly different finishing process. I can't tell you if that makes a difference.

One of the hardest things for customers to grasp is that SOMEONE has to pay for the labor on warranty issues, and it is NOT the manufacturer. They are in most cases very clear that they warrant the item, not the labor. SO, if you want labor coverage on your warranty, you hire a contractor who is willing to provide that coverage, and he is NOT mother teresa...he has to charge for that coverage in his markup. Hard for a lot of people to grasp that. If they want to buy a bargain basement prices, they must self-insure the labor!