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Genuine .v. Compatible Spare Tap Parts

‘Genuine’ means that it comes directly from the Manufacturer of your Kitchen Tap.   A Compatible part is a part that is a copy of the Genuine Part.

Our Genuine Tap Parts come from Europe and the UK.

• A compatible Tap Part can never be the Part that the manufacturer of your tap used in your tap.
• A compatible Tap Part can never be tried and tested on a production line of the Tap model that uses your Tap Part as part of the development and production process of your Tap.
• A compatible Tap Part can never be the Part that the Manufacturer of your Tap continues to use in their ongoing production of your Tap and other Taps they make.

If you think about it logically, you use your Kitchen Tap many times throughout the day. Does it make sense to NOT fit a Genuine Spare Tap Part ?

Buying the Genuine Spare Part instead of a compatible part for only a few £ less is very important for the following reasons 

• The manufacturer that made your Tap has selected and tested all the Spare Parts that are used in your Tap. It is part of their rigourous design process when the manufacturer starts out to design a new Tap from scratch. A compatible valve cannot possibly be put through the same rigorous testing because they have not designed the Tap itself.
• If the manufacturer makes a change to a Tap then they might also change the spare parts that go with the new internal modifcations.  Where this happens the manufacturer advises on the best spare part that is currently availalbe to make account of any modifications or where a tap is very old.
• A Spare part can be discontinued e.g. there is one valve currently , the 3547R and it looks identical to an older valve but we know for a fact that the 3547R is NOT the same as the older valve which is long discontinued.  We, where we see a Tap with the discontinued valve that looks like the current 3547R, supply instead the 4276R.  That is why in some cases you wlil see on our website that we recommend a different valve than the valve that you remove from your own tap for this very reason.
• Not every spare part is listed on a blue print of spare parts or in a lot of cases are any spare parts listed by part number.  Again a supplier of a compatible Tap Part cannot know all the internal parts in every tap , especially for very old taps that are long discontinued (and for which we would still stock the spare parts).
• We can contact the manufacturer of the tap where there is an issue if we cannot solve it.  A supplier of compatible spare parts is not in the same position to do this becuase they are not selling genuine spare parts.
• We supply Taps, not online, that use these parts so we know the workings of every Tap.

We ourselves supply compatible valves for less than 5 taps on our website. This is in contrast to the thousands of Genuine Spare Products listed on our website .  This is only because home owners have contacted us where they cannot source the part anymore i.e the manufacturer of the Tap no longer exists.   In the rare case that we are supplying a ‘compatible’ part we state very clearly that it is only a ‘compatible’ part.

Genuine O Rings and Genuine Spouts:

You will note that we do NOT supply ever compatible O Rings for the end of a Spout. Why? because O Rings are specifically designed in conjunction with the Tap itself to withstand water pressure flowing through the tap in such a way that the Tap will not leak.  Every Tap manufactured that we supply O Rings for has gone through months of rigoruous testing.  When we supply the genuine O Ring Kit we know that it will fix a drip where the O Rings are the issue. Unless the O Rings are damaged when being fitted , the only reason O Rings do not fix a drip is because the issue is with the Spout itself i.e minute pinholes that often can be invisible at first glance.  Again, because we supply the Genuine O Rings we can also supply, if required, the Genuine Spout to fit the Tap.  If you observe, a supplier of compatible parts does not offer this option.  And better still, should you purchase O Rings from us and it turns out to be the Spout, we can discount that cost of the O Rings from the New Spout.  It is a win-win solution.

Which Model of Tap do I have ? What Spare Part do I need ? 

It can be difficult to know which Spare Part you need, let alone buy , but we are here to assist you.  Especially where you might not even know the model of your Tap (or sometimes we find that even though there is one model noted on Kitchen documentation, when we see the picture of the Tap it is in fact a different model).  All you have to do is contact us (use the contact button at the bottom right of this page to send us a message) or you can email us sales@tapsandsinksonline.co.uk.   This Guide here ‘My Kitchen Tap is dripping‘ goes through the most common issues and solutions which is useful to give a background understanding before you embark on your DIY and we are here to gladly assist.  We have had numerous customers  with no previous DIY experience that have purchased the correct spare parts, with our assistance, and using our DIY guides have fixed their taps themselves.

You can find here all the Genuine Spare Kitchen Tap Parts here by Brand (listed Alphabetically)

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You can find here all the Genuine Spare Kitchen Tap Parts here by Part category.