Howden's Quote- how to know if it is reasonable?

MrsWenger

Hi everyone,

We have received a quote from our kitchen installer and I know it is the price they have quoted him. We only have the design,not the list of components, and I would like to try and understand if it is a good deal. The design does detail the sizes of the units.

I know that due to the October sale it is the month that the discounts or offers are said to be at the greatest but is there any website or comparison tool I could use to check the prices? I have no reason to mistrust the guy himself; I just want to try and establish if the price is reasonable.

Any guidance, advice or suggestions would be very welcome please.

Thanks,

Tracey

A1P

Howdens are trade only.Their pricing system is rather opaque.It seems to operate as follows.They give the installer a price and he can either give the customer that price or put his margin on it which a tradesman is entitled to do.The quality generally receives favourable reviews and the fitter has instant access to them if parts are missing etc. In the nightmare world of kitchens this is worth a lot.There are whole sites devoted to complaints against kitchen companies.The most obvious way to price check is to try other suppliers but as the sale ends this Saturday this is probably not possible.

adamg

what range of kitchen what discounts, how do you know he is passing on his full discount?

MrsWenger

Thanks for your reply. I understand how they operate, and I know the guy has quoted me his actual price, but it is the niggle in my mind of is that a good price from them that prompted my question really.

I quite accept the benefits of the product you refer to and know that cheap is cheap for a reason in most cases. It is just the concept of not knowing whether, say £5k, is a good Howdens price or not. If there was an option to check that in some way i would have liked to have done so.

MrsWenger

adamg wrote: »

what range of kitchen what discounts, how do you know he is passing on his full discount?

Hi Adam, it is Tewkesbury white. I don't know the guys discount % but he does a lot of work for a friend of mine and I have no reason to doubt what he has said. It seems to me each branch offers different things, we went into one locally which said they do 75% discount, the one our guy uses does 3 for 2 on cabinets. Of course, I understand the nett price is the definitive but it is just a different context for me as I am used to a retail way of working of course as I am not in the trade.

As I mentioned, I can tell what the units are from the plan but have not seen the kit list so to speak.

southcoastrgi

you don't know it's his price, howdens can give him two quotes one for you showing discount & one for him showing his discount & they could be completely different but because your copy shows discount it looks like his price, but tbh i don't see why you or anyone else should get his price he needs to make a profit & he will only do that on materials, if you take into consideration the time he has spent at your house & at howdens working out the design & then getting prices unless he is charging you for this time & knowledge then that cost comes out of his profit.

A1P

Have a look at kitchencollection.co.uk. They have ranges of rigid units and a price guide.This might help you to compare typical unit prices. Howdens have their own brand of appliances these can be checked against typical branded ones on the web.

MrsWenger

southcoastrgi wrote: »

you don't know it's his price, howdens can give him two quotes one for you showing discount & one for him showing his discount & they could be completely different but because your copy shows discount it looks like his price, but tbh i don't see why you or anyone else should get his price he needs to make a profit & he will only do that on materials, if you take into consideration the time he has spent at your house & at howdens working out the design & then getting prices unless he is charging you for this time & knowledge then that cost comes out of his profit.

I have no issue with him making a profit of course. He has not been to our house yet, he wanted us to work with Howdens on the design and then he will visit. You could of course be right with regards to there being two price lists but I genuinely do not think that is the case. However, I am not attempting to verify what he has passed to me discount wise, I was asking if a comparison tool was available to allow me to see if the figure I have is reasonable.

MrsWenger

A1P wrote: »

Have a look at kitchencollection.co.uk. They have ranges of rigid units and a price guide.This might help you to compare typical unit prices. Howdens have their own brand of appliances these can be checked against typical branded ones on the web.

Thanks very much, I will have a look at that.

LEJC

We have just had a howdens kitchen and a similar deal was passed from our builder to us...I havwe been in the position to see the price and the breakdown of discount he receivedwhich ranges from 80% for a few items,typically 60 on most and 40 on some of the other bits and bobs...
We didnt have a massive kitchen but have used the space woth both wall and floor cupboards and for ease opted for the built in oven as well...its gone into a rental property so in some ways whilst I would like to consider the quality aspect its fair to say it will probably need replacments typically more often than a kitchen built to last...

Tewksbury...I believe is one of the higher end ranges,we chose burford purely as its mid range and on looking at it in the "showroom" wasnt a great difference in quality to tewkesbury but better than the basic range the name of which I cant remember...

In terms of finding out if we had a decent deal with howdens we simply looked at other high street ranges and priced on a like for like or similar basis...and it proved to us that once installation and fitting costs were taken into account howdens was a reasonable deal...

Just for comparison our kitchen invoiced by howdens was £2200 give or take a few pounds and then obviously fitting was charged seperately by our fitter...we could not have got a comparable kitchen fitted for a better quote

MrsWenger

Thanks for the information LEJC. We actually have a quote for Burford as well now. We also have a relatively small kitchen, and Burford is around £3,500 with no appliances but it does include a pull out larder unit and a pull out storage rack in one of the corner units. I would just like to be comfortable with the Howdens price being fair for Howdens, if that make sense.