Overheating economy.

You can tell demand exceeds supply and the economy is overheating when you try to buy a bath, basin etc!  The bathroom hardware industry has put in place a really sophisticated sales prevention system.  'Only white' was the last sensible move they made. Now you try to choose a bath: catalogue or showroom?  Showrooms are difficult to get at: either the guardians want you to make an appointment so they can sell you their  dream for your bathroom or the plumbing merchants allow you to roam their randon collection of unidentifiable items scattered around their foyer.  But they will both give you catalogues.  Getting to work with the catalogues is like advanced Su Doku:  many catalogues contain the same ranges with the same photgraphs but branded differently and with enough measurement differences to make it unclear which one may be correct.  When a product looks promising you might ask the manufacturer or catalogue issuer where you might see an example of the product, but Niet, no-one knows who has got what on display.  The vagaries (or did he mean vaguaries?!) of the catalogues drive one back to the manufacturers' data sheets (where accessible), but these also have measurement errors (individual quoted dimensions don't add up to the overall quoted dimension) and omissions (such as the depth of water in the bath, the clearance for pipework under the bath or the steepness of the slope at the slopey end).   And the manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers are all profoundly indifferent or resigned to the situation.  One adviser we spoke to says most people give up sooner than we have, just choosing a vague picture from a catalogue and leaving the installer to mess around the piping, boxing and tiling after delivery and the user to put up with whatever (dis)comfort, water quantity, depth or inconvenience  the new kit may provide.  A sellers' market?  Or undiscerning buyers?
These suppliers the best of the bunch.