Wickes is yet another well known DIY store in the UK, and as such it is a good place to visit as a potential mitre saw stockist.
Where can I find the website?
The website is found on www.wickes.co.uk, although it comes up if you Google the word DIY.
A Selection of the Best Selling Mitre Saws from Wickes
How do I find the mitre saws section of the site?
Good question. From the opening screen its not exactly clear, since the ‘tools’ button is right at the bottom and off many screens. When you do scroll down you’ll find tools on the left hand side at the bottom but when you click on it you see it brings up all sorts of other stuff as well – ladders, car wheels etc. Even when you then click on the drill image you get another screen subdividing it into types of power tools. When you go through that one to carpentry all the different carpentry power tools are jumbled together – jigsaws, sabre saws, reciprocating saws and, at last, mitre saws.
If you type mitre saws into their search engine top left, you get this page, which has a sabre saw and a jigsaw in view, so that you think you’re in the wrong place!
If you want to go straight there the nearest Wickes come to a dedicated URL for this part of the website is http://www.wickes.co.uk/Power-Tools/.
What types and brands of mitre saw do they offer?
They offer their own brand saws, in the Wickes corporate colours of blue and grey. They are at the budget end of the market and offer a strictly limited choice. For example although they do have a compound sliding saw they don’t have a laser option. Prices for their top end model look good at £200 and there is a short technical specification for the models, which is helpful up to a point but, for example the model mentioned doesn’t have soft start, each way incline, etc.
Are there any buying guides or useful sections of information about mitre saws?
There are guides, contained in downloadable PDFs that you get to from the ‘Help and Advice’ button along the top navigation bar. However they aren’t very helpful, and give very little buying advice. The leaflets focus almost exclusively on safety issues, which is good in a way but not very helpful when it comes to choosing your saw. That said, with a selection of saws this limited they probably don’t want to draw attention to the fact that you don’t really have a choice and assume their customers want to hear about how to use their tools safely.
When you are actually on product screens you can scroll down to see product peer reviews, and there are quite a number of these for most tools. However take them with a pinch of salt as you have no way of assessing the expertise of the author.
They also have a ‘quick shop’ button where you can put their catalogue numbers into the boxes and make a quick easy list for re-stocking with everyday items like screws and drill bits.
Anything else I should know about?
Wickes offers free delivery for orders over £45, which is less than the cut off for Screwfix, and you can pay extra for a morning or a Saturday delivery. They also have a news section of articles about DIY and a Best Deals section which looks as if it has some bargains.
There is also an email sign up which will send you ‘best deals’ and keep you up to date.
Because there is a lot of flash on the site, and it’s fairly image heavy, it isn’t the simplest or most navigable site to use. On sites like this clicking on the ‘sitemap’ button is great, as you get the clickable lists and can find what you need fairly easily.
In conclusion
The Wickes site, at least if you are looking for mitre saws, is of limited value. Not only is it difficult to find the relevant section but when you do find it the tools are jumbled up with things like tile cutters. That said they have a few budget options and a wealth of other DIY offerings.