diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.2.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.2.txt
index 58dc1da214c05..5bd78ec6b439a 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.2.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.15.2.txt
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@ Bug Fixes
 - Bug in ``merge`` where ``how='left'`` and ``sort=False`` would not preserve left frame order (:issue:`7331`)
 - Fix: The font size was only set on x axis if vertical or the y axis if horizontal. (:issue:`8765`)
 - Fixed division by 0 when reading big csv files in python 3 (:issue:`8621`)
-
+- Fixed an unclear error message in ``qcut`` when repeated values result in duplicate bin edges. 
 
 
 
diff --git a/pandas/tools/tests/test_tile.py b/pandas/tools/tests/test_tile.py
index 4a0218bef6001..c099ee787d2c9 100644
--- a/pandas/tools/tests/test_tile.py
+++ b/pandas/tools/tests/test_tile.py
@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@ def test_qcut_specify_quantiles(self):
         self.assertTrue(factor.equals(expected))
 
     def test_qcut_all_bins_same(self):
-        assertRaisesRegexp(ValueError, "edges.*unique", qcut, [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0], 3)
+        assertRaisesRegexp(ValueError, "quantiles.*repeated", qcut, [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0], 3)
 
     def test_cut_out_of_bounds(self):
         arr = np.random.randn(100)
diff --git a/pandas/tools/tile.py b/pandas/tools/tile.py
index 6830919d9c09f..2f98f314c3afe 100644
--- a/pandas/tools/tile.py
+++ b/pandas/tools/tile.py
@@ -165,6 +165,10 @@ def qcut(x, q, labels=None, retbins=False, precision=3):
     else:
         quantiles = q
     bins = algos.quantile(x, quantiles)
+    if len(algos.unique(bins)) < len(bins):
+        bins_sorted = np.sort(bins, axis=None)
+        bins_dup = algos.unique(bins_sorted[bins_sorted[1:] == bins_sorted[:-1]])        
+        raise ValueError('One or more quantiles consists entirely of a repeated value: %s' % repr(bins_dup))       
     return _bins_to_cuts(x, bins, labels=labels, retbins=retbins,precision=precision,
                          include_lowest=True)