Kitchen recommendations

Doozergirl

I can echo, in fact, I've said a few times that the correspondence is dire. I can deal with two days to get an answer if there's then someone actually attending to you once you hit the top of the list, but each reply drops you down to the bottom and you wait again for days.

I really only wanted confirmation of a few small questions as I'm an absolute stickler for detail but gave up after 10 days of mainly waiting.

And yes, the delivery dates slip the whole time you're waiting. If you're prepared to completely DIY the order process online and aren't concerned about getting everything to line up perfectly, then it's probably fine.

I ended up taken the printed list from the basket and gave it to Howdens. That's sorted out the rubbish prices we were getting from them, at least!

Working with Kitchens4DIY at the moment. I stumbled across them whilst looking for a very specific worktop. Showroom is only 20 minutes from us and they have an even wider range - they do a double larder unit which can be elusive from cheaper suppliers.

Davesnave

sliderm wrote: »

Ideally I'd like to go with a kitchen I can get locally rather than ordering on-line. Otherwise DIY kitchens look good.

Parts of South Somerset aren't a zillion miles from Crediton, where Ashgrove Kitchens are.

They make their own carcases and buy in doors/moving bits, like many others. We found them OK and they did good deals on appliances.

My only criticism is that there was no after-fitting contact or evaluation, which when you've spent £14k isn't good enough. Luckily, we've had no issues with the kitchen in 3 years, but companies that are so up themselves they miss out on feedback cannot learn to improve.

rubble2

We have a DIY kitchen sitting in the garage waiting installation while the fitter is currently ripping out the old one. I am hopeful that the quality of the units is as good as I have heard - will find out soon.

I must agree though with the above comments regarding poor customer service. Our first problem was with door samples, we paid for samples to be sent and heard nothing for over two weeks until we contacted them again and were told that they were waiting for a new batch of samples to be produced, these eventually arrived and we decided on the kitchen we wanted- sorted out the order list and were told that delivery would be W/C 21st May, went online immediately afterwards to place the order and the first available delivery was coming up as W/C 27th May when questioned they said 'Oh yes, that changed two days ago' so why didn't you tell me that?

The week before the due delivery we got a message saying that they were extremely busy and if we elected to move back the delivery date by a week they would compensate us with £100, we said no because we had the fitter booked for that week. Two days later we got a further message saying that due to a fault on one of the spraying lines the order would be put back a week anyway (no sign now of the £100 offer!).

So we had to rearrange things with the fitter anyway - Kitchen turned up at 9pm on Friday 7th June so technically still delivered during that amended week, but lets face it - only just.

As I say hopefully the kitchen won't disappoint (the fitter has used them before and rates the quality highly) but don't expect an easy ride or 5 star customer service.

JEN22

Nothing but trouble with our Sigma kitchen units

PurAsc

Local kitchen suppliers may be able to offer better-priced products than the nationals.

HURSTY14

2 orders placed for a large Stanbury kitchen based on previous reviews & Which no 1/ Houzz recommended. Well I was clearly hoodwinked! BEWARE! ......They’ve now started to block customers commenting on their social media pages!!! Speaks volumes!

All appeared great UNTIL the delivery arrived on the 20th May’19 or should I say part delivered! I paid £250 for “Platinum” delivery…….! 3 items on the despatch note “marked” as missing HOWEVER ordered items were not on the despatch, only discovered once we began fitting! Clearly I needed to reconcile my original order to the despatch note?! Good business & customer processes would reconcile the order to the despatch and determine the missing items, with an expected date to follow!

During the kitchen fit it became apparent that the spray paint of our standard coloured cornicing & pelmets were sub-quality (dried paint drips visible to the eye) and needed to be returned and re-issued, (who bubble wrapped these items in the factory? Stevie Wonder?) the fridge door was damaged, the Larder drawer runners missing, side panels missing, larder shelves missing, 1 x Larder door has visible dried paint drippings, bespoke coloured 4 pans drawer front doors missing, dresser front doors missing!!!!! How can you have so many missing kitchen items on an order and think it’s ready for despatch and therefore ready for a kitchen fitter to install? Shocking!

Notably Diy Kitchens mantra: (detailed on website & their showrooms)
“Make life easy & with factory fitted doors! Here at DIY Kitchens we operate an open & honest pricing policy. We advise customers to watch the video below before making a final decision. Please note that we now supply all our kitchen units with doors/drawers fitted as standard. Your units will arrive fully rigid with all doors/drawer fronts pre-fitted (this is now included in the price of our units, and no additional fittings costs will be charged at the checkout phase) “ Under the Trades Description Act it’s an offence to give false and misleading description of good and services they supply! It’s evident from social media that this is common place for DIY kitchens to issue kitchen units without the doors! They even market their goods with notable comparisons with their competitors which is truly misleading.

We STILL have 9 active tickets with DIY kitchens which has stopped the fitting and completion of our kitchen ……we are telephoning their after sales team every day (if we can get through) and have been given numerous messages ranging from “They’re on the courier tomorrow” and subsequently don’t arrive. The after sales team are losing all control & integrity! It’s a sinking ship! …..Furthermore I have now received 20 kitchen handles (should have been 24!) in the post minus the screws ! Arghhhh! The after sales team can’t even get hold of the factory to get some traction on the active tickets! You couldn’t make this ineptness up!

I’m shocked by the appalling customer journey, the lack of apathy and speed in resolving my issues. Plus I am clearly not alone in this situation from reviews on their Instagram & Twitter feeds ( note - they are removing and blocking negative customers posts!) The saga unfortunately continues 1 month later.... very stressful indeed!

rubble2

Quick update on our DIY Kitchens kitchen.

Following on from the delivery delays mentioned above the kitchen is now fitted and fully functional. We are very pleased with the look and quality of the units and the fitter also praised the build quality etc. of the units.

We found half way through the install that they hadn't supplied the glazed doors for one of the wall units (all the units are supplied assembled with doors attached) except apparently for the glazed ones which have the doors supplied (or not supplied in our case) separately which is why we didn't spot this sooner.

We contacted DIY and they apologised and quoted 7 to 10 days delivery on the missing items. a day or so later we were carrying out a final check on what we had left to fit and decided to unwrap the glass shelves we had ordered for the same wall unit. The shelves were very well packaged and labelled with the contents on the outside wrapper - 1000mm glass shelves, but once unwrapped we found they were actually 900mm shelves so we contacted DIY again for replacements.

About the same time as this the fitter suggested that we might need a couple of extra base unit end panels to finish off the install so we ordered those as a separate order, again they quoted 7 to 10 days delivery. The fitter was then able to re-configure things slightly meaning that the two extra panels would not now be needed, I contacted Customer Service to cancel the order and was told to post the cancellation as a support ticket on their website which I did and mentioned at the same time a reminder about the missing items.

Four days later I got a reply to the support ticket saying that the missing items would be despatched by the end of the week, I again replied asking for confirmation that both the missing doors and shelves would be sent together and again reminding them of the cancelled order (payment had been taken at time of ordering) and again requesting a refund.

Heard nothing until the next day when I received a message that as the panels I had ordered (and cancelled) were in the spray shop and they couldn't therefore now be cancelled !.

Rang Customer services to ask why an order that we had cancelled five days earlier had now ended up in the spray shop, and after a considerable delay while high level negotiations took place they agreed to issue a full refund. The missing parts were delivered as promised and the refund has landed in my account so all is now good.

In summary, Kitchen quality and design excellent, customer service frustrating and a bit shambolic.

Would I recommend DIY kitchens? possibly not because I would only recommend a supplier that I genuinely thought did everything right and to my complete satisfaction.
Not being a serial kitchen purchaser I may be doing them a disservice as all the other kitchen suppliers could be 10 times worse and I have nothing else to compare my experience with.

At least we have ended up with a kitchen we like and I am sure that in time the problems we encountered will be forgotten ( I am sure the experience could have been a lot worse).

supa34

I am looking to buy a kitchen for my BTL and on these forums the most commen names are DIY kitchen, ikea, and howdens.

I know on this thread DIY kitchen is getting a bad time but others swear by them and have no issue.

End of day if you want amazing service, all drawn and perfectly planned for you then you have to pay alot more. There is, a reason why their kitchens are alot cheaper.

Also 9 of 10 they will get order right but no one will leave a positive review or 1 might. But the 1/10 that had a mistake in the order will leave reviews. So do take with pinch of salt.

I haven't had chance to do to pontefract but will do next month and compare price and quality to ikea and howden.,

Keith99

I ordered a kitchen from DIY kirchens and found them as other people have mentioned a little slow at amswering questions but they did always answer them.


The two really bad reviews have only posted once and a really long post, it does seem a bit fishy?



I had one issue. where a unit was damaged I recieved a new one within 7 days, so can't really complain.

andy_b_stone

Hello everyone,

Just an update from me. We have now Ikea kitchen installed, based on the layout I created for DIY-K, actually using their kitchen planner and then reproducing this design in Ikea's planner, as close as I could.

My ordeal with DIY-K was mostly about concave (inwards curved) doors - at the time I was about to place my order with DIY-K their web-site, and apparently even their internal database, were messed up in terms of the styles/ranges that include or not concave doors. I was really angry at them because it took about 2 weeks to clarify. To start with, they almost mislead me into placing an incomplete (by their mistake) order with a style that would not have concave doors. It all coincided with malfunctioning of their new line in the factory (as mentioned above), which also added confusion about the delivery times for the affected styles (most of them anyway). - Eventually I had to step back and look somewhere else, because I had a strict project plan in mind and did not want to postpone it indefinitely, as it looked to be with DIY-K.

Now I am glad we turned to Ikea and did not buy into concave doors.

1. In the meantime I learnt that internally curved doors have been discontinued by most of the suppliers as expensive and 'problematic' (probably in use too).

2. Ikea has a 365 days return/exchange policy so that one can replace cabinets, units, doors and whatever elements within a year!

3. Ikea does not make you order any 'minimum kitchen set' (like at least 10 units, as we heard from other suppliers) and there is no 'minimum order sum' to be spent in Ikea (like about £750 with DIY-K - not very helpful if you need, say, extra decor panel or cornice/pelmet later on).

4. There is so much decor and fittings you can decide to buy later on, and not necessarily from Ikea, if you are not certain at the time of ordering the main units...

5. Last but not least, Ikea delivers your kitchen as quickly as in 3 working days after an order is placed, and takes under £50 for two men delivery to your ground floor or garage (should be easily accessible). Now compare this with DIY-K -starting at £75 for no-man delivery (diy!) onto your drive-way or public path; do you have enough room there for the pre-assembled kitchen?What if it is raining on the day? .

We are very happy now with our Ikea kitchen - everything is in place, beautiful and works as supposed to. 

Andy