New Kitchen.... B & Q

AceP

B&Q have firms of fitters by area that they farm out the work to, and pay each company a daily rate. They have ex fitters working for them, who say "this kitchen shouldn't take 2 guys more than 3 days to do, hence we'll pay £700, who wants it." More often than not the guys take the jobs on to keep themselves busy but don't get paid a huge amount. In result, B&Q charges the customer £2k or more to get installation.

Having worked for B&Q I can safely say their showrooms department is a sham. Would barely buy their products, let alone use them to fit. My cousin supplies granite countertops and tiles to them and apparently whatever he makes, B&Q makes double and that's basically a brokers fee.

Big companies have become big due to them doing it all right, but that also leaves much to go wrong and many to make it so. If it was me, I'd fish round for an independent, local firm who will do a better job for half the price in quarter of the time.

ALSO PLEASE ENSURE YOU READ THIS. Sorry did not want to shout but very important. If you are getting a builder to do the job, you will already have got a quote from B&Q for your kitchen with a breakdown of each cabinet and price etc. A builder registered with their "trade only" outfit, TradePoint, can buy this kitchen for around 20-30% off. This is normal, but what is not is that B&Q allows the purchase on a Trade account, but also prints out a retail invoice showing retail prices. Example, Mr Smith gets a quote for £4000 for a kitchen. His builder XXXX Ltd goes in with said quote, pays £2600 after discount for the kitchen and gets a RETAIL invoice for the sale. Shows Mr Smith this who pays him the retail price. So the builders just trousered £1400! This used to happen on a daily basis in TP, have seen builders just telling their customers to get a quote and they'll sort out the money after, knowing full well they'll pocket the difference, which in one instance was over £7k!! Be warned. HTH

keystone

AceP wrote: »

Having worked for B&Q.....

Cheers

womble12345

I paid B&Q to fit my kitchen in March, I paid them a premium because they would project manage it but they havent. The electrician that they subcontracted mislabelled the electrics and I have had to resort to contact the electrician direct rather than them doing it. I didnt want to have to project manage it, hence I paid their prices but I ended up doing it myself in the end. In future I will get an independent fitter and project manage it myself and save a couple of grand!

MoneyMakesMeHard

There are always too many variables involved with regards to most domestic installations, especially kitchens.

I have seen the quotes from the larger companies, such as wickes, when we are competing with them to win a supply and installation and they appear to leave a lot of scope for increased price later down the line, and when you consider that they are vastly over priced compared to smaller companies the potential buyer is going to be parting with a great deal more than they need to should they choose them.

On average we supply and install from between 5k and 10k, the differences in price will be down to the spec of goods, the types of goods (how long do they take to fit) the status of the kitchen itself - do the walls need leveling, is there a lot of electrical works / alterations to do, is there lots of plumbing and gas work to do, how much wall tiling is there going to be, is the floor going to be ceramic or is it going to be laminate, is the floor reasonably level etc etc.

Due to the fact that most people haven't got a good enough understanding about domestic installation (and why should they? its not their job), they have little choice but to find a company that can do all of the works involved, in my opinion, getting loads of different trades in and project managing it will be a no no for most people, it will be far too stressful and there will be mistakes made. We generally get more work than other people for the fact we do everything, people often mention how painful it is to trying to find people who can do it all.

The way i see it, people should have a budget in mind of what they would like to spend ideally.

With most of our customers we find that they have big ideas but they don't have the cash to fund them. We often have to say to people 'leave the breakfast bar, you can't afford it'. 'Have laminate tiles instead of ceramic floor tiles, you can't afford it' 'by not having lighting under your wall units you will save x amount of money' we guide people into their budget of what they would like to spend.

People are always happy with the work we do. I am not always very happy, i feel that people skimp in order to save money by having free standing appliances for instance instead of integrated, and it ends up being quite detrimental to the over all finish.

In my opinion, should the works required be relatively straight forward i would think fitting price of around £2500 would be more like it, maybe £3000.