Wren Kitchens - My Review

prometheus1

scumbags all of wren middle management, run by slack assss good for nothing scumbags, i wont even buy from ebuyer as is it the sister company and dont want to risk any of my hard earned cash going to these SCUMBAGS

puregeordie

Yes, stay away also. I hadn't really heard of wren but they seem to have had good deals over the Xmas period in Team Valley, so we decided to spend over a grand on new glass bedroom furniture.

Big mistake, to the present day we still have not had any furniture that wasn't smashed in transit. Also there delivery service from Arrow XL are awful and on one occasion the guy couldn't lift the drawers so he was rolling them on the ground.

Poor quality, ie the drawaers don't shut properly even when trying the level them/things drop off and always find something wrong (wrong colour) if it has been delivered successfully.

We didn't even know anything about it and recieved some flowers the other day from the delivery firm. Christ we don't even have a vase and I'm allergic.

Keep away and go elsewhere.

Thanks.

Dark_Nemesis_Returns

Remember me anyone??

rogger_2

As requested by Wren, I wrote an on-line review of my experience of their service. The fitter, who, amongst other things, I had criticised for appearing to be more interested in the money than the installation, phoned NEXT DAY to accuse me of having lost him his job with Wren. How did he know? Well, he said there was a mole in Wren's head office who leaked adverse reviews to him... Pick the bones out of that.

coxy999

Just so that this review is not all negative, regarding the quality of the kitchen units, the base units are of very good quality. The doors however I cannot comment on yet, as on delivery of my Wren Kitchen I had the unpleasant surprise of the delivery missing 14 doors! There was no notification of this prior to delivery and the showroom sales persons were very surprised to hear that 14 doors were missing. As the days and now weeks have passed we have been informed that there is a severe door shortage and for all intensive purposes the sales persons have no idea when they will be available. Again a delivery was arranged for today, three weeks after the original delivery and we were again surprised to receive only 2 doors. So still 12 doors missing and no one at "When" have a clue when they will turn up.
Such a shame, initial sales and design consultations were well done, quality seems good, unfortunately a serious lack of communication and customer service makes it impossible for me to recommend Wren to anyone.....

Giggety

Good quality kitchens. Very good pre sales service, you will be told you are a valued member of the wren kitchen family.
After sales service is nothing short of disgusting. Unreturned phone calls, told products that were missing from original delivery would be delivered soon and were not and clearly they were never going to be. Told that items were at store when they were not. Still waiting for doors and drawers, even though they come supplied as whole units not flat pack so they must have known pre delivery that the order was incomplete, over three weeks since original delivery. Having yesterday spoke to the shop I have now been advised that my missing items have not yet been made and I will be looking at two weeks before I can expect the missing items.
If this is how they treat the wren kitchen family, of which I was told I am now a member, then they are truly a dysfunctional family.

stella10956

As an ex-employee of Wren Living, formerly known as Wren Kitchens I feel duty bound to expose some of the dirty tricks practised by this company.
I am an experienced kitchen designer with a good few years experience, but even I was sucked in by the gloss of the Wren showrooms and the promise of exceptional earning potential etc.,.
I suppose the old adage of whatever glitters is not necessarily gold, and boy is it not gold at Wren.
Alarm bells should have rung for me when I attended their “training course” and found myself practically the only one with ANY knowledge of kitchen planning let alone sales. This leads to catastrophic errors such as measuring errors, health and safety issues etc., Remember, these are the people you are entrusting your dream kitchen ideas with. In the majority of cases you’ll get a dream alright but it is more likely to be a nightmare rather than something pleasant
During this course the emphasis was on the Wren Selling Plan, yes, they really call it that. The main drive is to make the customer place a deposit that day, whatever it takes, even if it means lying to the customer and telling them that the sale ends today etc., the sale never ends at Wren. The highly inflated List Price is never charged and is a number generated at random to make the so called Sale price look good. I am by no means naïve when it comes to sales and I know that when targets have to be met there is always the drive to get that last sale to meet target, but this happens with every sale at Wren.
The reason for this is that the sales staff are under so much pressure due to the fact that they have to sell to a threshold before they earn any commission. Currently that threshold is £25,000 per month, if you sell £24,999 – no commission! Just in case you do reach that threshold there is the opportunity to claw back money from the designers in any number of ways, costs for random problems are passed back to the designer at up to 50% of the list price. Designers can sell ridiculously well and still end the month on basic money!
As for the fitting service, it is absolutely ridiculously expensive and likely to be carried out by completely ill equipped, inexperienced fitters at an exorbitant rate. That rate however does not go to the fitter – you guessed it – straight into Wren’s pocket. So as so often happens, you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
Many customers have recently experienced major quality problems with the handleless range. They are sitting with half finished kitchens, missing doors and drawer fronts. A short while ago Wren decided that they could cut costs by manufacturing these doors themselves, previously they bought them in, contrary to the blurb put out that they manufacture their own, this cost cutting was not to give the customer a better deal but to put more money into the companies pocket. This has spectacularly backfired on them as they are now so snowed under trying to put right all the quality issues. that they can’t keep up with the current orders.
The situation is so bad that no designers were paid any of the commission they earned for March, and as a consequence there has been a mass of resignations throughout the company.
Any company that cannot pay any of its staff correctly might appear to be in trouble. You need to ask whether Wren will go the way of all the other companies that those at the top have been associated with, down the proverbial!!
Anyone thinking of buying a kitchen from Wren, do so at your own risk.
At least read ALL the review sites before you do and go in with your eyes wide open, barter ruthlessly and get your own fitter.
I could go into so much more detail, all of which, unfortunately, would be negative, but hopefully I have said enough to warn you off. If you would like any more info I would be happy to respond regarding specifics.
I am one of the lucky ones, I left of my own accord and am now working for a reputable kitchen company. There are many less fortunate than me who live daily with the fact that they could walk in tomorrow and be got rid of, something that Wren find easy due to the appalling contract they give their designers, which is not worth the paper it is written on and amounts to no more than a zero hours contract.

[Deleted User]

stella10956 wrote: »

I left of my own accord and am now working for a reputable kitchen company.

You sound like a disgruntled former employee of this company, especially as you felt the need to post a duplicate post elsewhere on this forum.

GipsyRacer

Reading the posts above, it seems that I am not alone in the problems I have with Wren's handle-less range. My £12,000 kitchen was delivered several weeks ago with several of the painted doors missing. As I progressed with the installation (which I am doing myself), I noticed quality problems with the painted doors:- shade variations, blemishes in the paint finish, rough edges on the handles, chips and missing paint on the corners. Although the doors had been very well packed, several had damage where they had obviously been dropped or knocked before packing. A second delivery including some of the missing doors had similar problems. They have just missed a promised delivery date for the balance of the doors & replacements.

It certainly looks like the poster above is right, and not just disgruntled; there is clearly a manufacturing problem leading to an inability to supply.

Wren staff have been polite, communicative and generally quite helpful. However, it is starting to look like they are unable to fulfill their end of the deal in a timely manner. And they have my £12k......

I have invested a lot of my own time in the installation so far, and have also cut, modified and drilled lots of the parts already supplied. Rejecting the whole order is not really a viable option.

Does anyone, perhaps Wren employees or customers with a similar experience, have suggestions for a good solution? (I'm thinking partial refund and purchase doors elsewhere, but how do I leverage Wren to do this?)

cddc

Interesting that this thread went quiet for a couple of months and is now back with a vengeance as all the Winter Sale orders start to be delivered and installed.

Wren are expanding rapidly and by doing that, it seems they have caused themselves problems....again...

Just when they seem to get to the stage where they are beginning to get the supply chain and aftersales problems sorted, they open another bunch of new showrooms and create a demand they cannot fulfill....again....

It's like groundhog day!

Yes I do work for a competitor and have friends who left to work for Wren. I, myself, have been offered a job by them, which, thank god, I turned down. Their experiences reflect Stella's and those of the customers reflect some that I know of as well.

It did seem for some of last year like they were getting themselves sorted and I was nearly tempted to join them. The showrooms are fantastic, and the product is not at all bad. When everything goes well they can represent good value...

But....the same old issues keep on cropping up. Again and again and again.....