Ex WREN employee turns whistleblower

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.

Before anyone accuses me of being just a disgruntled ex employee let me just say I no longer have anything to do with Wren but after reading the myriad of posts regarding Wren I should put the employees point of view.

[Deleted User]

stella10956 wrote: »

Before anyone accuses me of being just a disgruntled ex employee let me just say I no longer have anything to do with Wren but after reading the myriad of posts regarding Wren I should put the employees point of view.

I'm still suspicious of your agenda in posting as you have.

stella10956

I've got no agenda, just want everyone to go in with eyes wide open, if they still want to buy they won't be able to say they weren't warned. This company are the worst example in the industry and operate almost like a pyramid scheme.

Would you buy a timeshare while you were on holiday? I bet the answer is you wouldn't be so daft, well apply that common sense to idea of making a purchase from Wren

Bantex_2

Sounds like any other direct sell company.
Do they pay "overs"?

stella10956

:rotfl:They don't pay anything if they can help it

bod1467

Wrong forum ... should be in Praise, Vent & Warnings.

bris

It's a bitter employee, nothing more, this will and should be removed as it's potentially libellous.

ThumbRemote

bris wrote: »

It's a bitter employee, nothing more, this will and should be removed as it's potentially libellous.

That doesn't mean it's not truthful though

[Deleted User]

ThumbRemote wrote: »

That doesn't mean it's not truthful though

If it's libel then, by definition, it's not "truthful".:eek:

Libel="a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation."

arcon5

There's no indication it is libellous at all!

Probably is a bitter employer. Probably also true!!

But is anybody surprised.. Some industries are simply like this, cut throat chasing every possible sale at all costs. Let's not forget the kitchens now guy who has actually been to prison because of his business activities (amongst other things)

cstreet

Well this rings true for me. Sadly I am one of those customers who ordered a handle less range from Wren in January.... and I'm still without some of the front doors. I keep being fobbed off, it's beyond a joke now and just don't know what to do to get my kitchen finished.