Wickes Kitchen Price Breakdown

Meepster

kmdesign wrote: »

Meepster - I am pretty sure PWS dont do any lacquered doors. They are all foils or timbers or am I missing something?

I was speaking to one of their reps on Monday, apparently that door is sourced from one of their suppliers in Italy and they will be bringing out a couple more next year.

(Well, that's what I was told, was having a debate about cheap integrated-handled doors flooding the market (Wren do 5 or 6 now for example) and he started on about that one)

cddc

Sofia and Caledonia are lacquered doors as Meeps says from Italy.

Speaking as a Wickes DC I cannot really defend our prices for the last three weeks (no wonder you are grinning Meeps), but for the three before that we were much much cheaper and able to compete with just about anyone.

The key to buying a kitchen from Wickes is to get in on the right offer. If you do, they are still good value.

ryder72

I agree with cddc - Wickes is perhaps the best product from the sheds provided it correctly priced.

We have seen some quotes recently from Wickes and to be honest they made me laugh.

Meepster

cddc wrote: »

Sofia and Caledonia are lacquered doors as Meeps says from Italy.

Speaking as a Wickes DC I cannot really defend our prices for the last three weeks (no wonder you are grinning Meeps), but for the three before that we were much much cheaper and able to compete with just about anyone.

The key to buying a kitchen from Wickes is to get in on the right offer. If you do, they are still good value.

To be fair, Wickes' biggest problem on pricing is with the installations and solid surface. I was asked to price up the cost of an install for one of my old colleagues in Scotland, so he could compare our fitting charge with Wickes - we were over 20% cheaper. Same goes for solid surfaces. We both use Sheridans, but we get a better unit price and we add on less margin to boot. Have wondered for ages why Wickes haven't got to grips with it.

Of all the sheds selling flat-packs, Wickes are a LONG way ahead of the competition with regards to quality, but they really need to sort their prices out, they should not be more expensive than a rigid-built comparative...

cddc - which part of the country are you in? If you've been with Wickes a while, I may know you (Not sure if I've asked you that before or not? lol)

cddc

I doubt you know me Meeps, have not been with Wickes for that long and am south of the Watford Gap (just), but we may have mutual friends as I know a few of the DC's up you way.

Our solid surface is silly price when there are not good discounts on, I agree with you there. Am baffled why they cannot get to grips with it either.

As for our fitting, well we are generally cheaper than B&Q and Homebase but still not the cheapest. Our fitters are generally excellent though and we pay them properly and promptly, unlike some of the other sheds. We have something like a 95% satisfaction rating with our fitting service from customers.

And as for overall prices, well...... I understand the frustration of some of the earlier posters on this thread right now, we are all frustrated too for much of the time recently. I do expect us to be competetive for the Winter sale period though.

Meepster

cddc wrote: »

I doubt you know me Meeps, have not been with Wickes for that long and am south of the Watford Gap (just), but we may have mutual friends as I know a few of the DC's up you way.

Our solid surface is silly price when there are not good discounts on, I agree with you there. Am baffled why they cannot get to grips with it either.

As for our fitting, well we are generally cheaper than B&Q and Homebase but still not the cheapest. Our fitters are generally excellent though and we pay them properly and promptly, unlike some of the other sheds. We have something like a 95% satisfaction rating with our fitting service from customers.

And as for overall prices, well...... I understand the frustration of some of the earlier posters on this thread right now, we are all frustrated too for much of the time recently. I do expect us to be competetive for the Winter sale period though.

Oh, you'll probably know someone who knows me then. I worked at HDC in Northampton for a while, along with covering management at Hanger Lane and Eastbourne (Not to mention every store in the North West and a fair few in Yorkshire and the Midlands)

What I don't get about the solid surface prices is, why they bother offering trying to sell them at all at "full price", I mean come on, EVERYONE who has anything to do with kitchens at Wickes knows that 99.99999% of people aren't stupid enough to buy it at the full retail price, so why bother quoting it at full price? Customers will just be scared off and once the fear of God is in them, they wont come back again...

I do know the fitting service is a lot better than it used to be when it was being run by MulitAssistance, but it is still over-priced. I tend to knock 20% off our retail price for installs, but even at 100% we are still cheaper and Wickes don't have the luxury of Trustmark to help justify the prices...

Looking in from the outside, it seems that things have changed a hell of a lot over the last 5 or 6 years, but not much has changed for the better