Incorrect shower fitting from the developer - exchange or refund?

Hello everyone,

we bought a new-build condominium from a developer in 2021, which we rent out. We stayed with the standard sanitary fittings. An embedded fitting with a thermostat was supposed to be installed here. By chance, I recently noticed that we only received the simpler embedded fitting without thermostat, which is about €500 cheaper according to the list price.

The responsible plumbing company is willing to install the thermostat fitting retrospectively. I am now wondering whether I actually want that, or whether a financial compensation for the reduced performance would be more reasonable. With an embedded thermostat, you gain comfort but also have higher maintenance costs because thermostats tend to break down. Naturally, I want to avoid that.

Can anyone estimate how much effort it is to install the embedded thermostat retrospectively? Do the tiles have to be knocked off again? What amount would you consider a reasonable compensation?

What do you think, how would you decide?

Thanks for your feedback!

Best regards!

I am not an expert, but in our case it is like this: Flush-mounted so-called universal boxes are installed. These are identical for both types of fittings. The actual fitting is attached to the universal box. This then contains the thermostat or it does not. However, it is only installed after tiling. The effort to replace it should therefore be relatively low in my opinion and also not create much mess. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you anything about maintenance, as we have no experience with it ourselves.

Can anyone estimate how much effort it takes to retroactively install the UP thermostat?

If an ibox or similar is available as a base unit, the replacement might take about 10 minutes and is completely non-destructive. I am now 50 and have never had a thermostat break on me ;-)

If you have a lot of lime in the water, thermostats tend to break easily. At least, I removed mine after 2 years.

Without a product description, it is difficult to say much about financial compensation.

If you have a lot of lime in the water, thermostats tend to break easily. At least, I removed mine after 2 years.

Without a product description, it's hard to say much about the financial compensation.

It is about Kludi Zenta UP thermostat control once and the corresponding counterpart without a thermostat: UP shower single-lever mixer.

Kludi Zenta UP thermostat faucet 305 euros

Kludi Zenta UP shower single-lever mixer. 104 euros

Ergo approx. 200 euros refund. The proportional surcharge will not be given to you by the BT.