Thinking of using Sharps or Hammonds? Don't. Do this instead.

dontmess666

Anyone thinking of having fitted wardrobes from Sharps Bedrooms or Hammonds Bedrooms, do yourself a favour. Save money and get a vastly better service by using a local independent fitter instead. I speak, having done three bedrooms through each Hammonds, Sharps and local fitter. 

First of all you get none of that nonsense sales bluster drivel that Sharps and Hammonds insist on spouting. Invite them into your house for a quote, and you're going to get: "Well the price comes to [ridiculously inflated sales price], but we're doing a special 90% discount offer, so i can offer you x". I'm amazed these clowns still train their sales people like this. You might aswell say the wardrobe is going to be half a million pounds, but i can do it for you for five grand. Treat people like fools. I even had the clown from Sharps feign to be offended when i told him he was clearly quoting insult prices, when he foolishly claimed he had never heard of the term, but yet he was offended by it. Give me a break.
Yet with a local fitter, never received any of that drivel. Comes round, measures up and quote straight forward unadulterated price. So sales patter. No hour long speech on the lengths Sharps or Hammonds go to for their customers (yeh right!). In and out, no messing about.

The second amazement is the price. I had a 2 door hinged wardrobe the Sharps clown quoted £4k for. Based of a standard carcass and door size (so not exactly made to measure despite their claims). I ended up fitting a 3 door wardrobe for half the price for a local independent!

And the final difference is the quality. I got outsourced contractor fitters from Hammonds. Such shoddy workmanship i have ever seen. Judge for yourself from the photos below. 
The quality from my local fitter was vastly superior, and even customised to my needs for no extra cost!

So, in conclusion - using the big national outfits you pay more and get less. Avoid Hammonds. Avoid Sharps. Use a local fitter instead!

Ebe_Scrooge

Oh look, there's a bear defecating over by that tree .......

Sorry, I know your post is well-intentioned, but it's hardly big news.  Any large national company is profit driven.  They have large overheads, expensive showrooms to maintain, adverts to pay for, staff to pay, often shareholders to answer to.  Their only goal is to make as much profit as possible.  A local tradesman - he wants to make a reasonable profit, of course, he has to live.  But he's not paying for all the overheads such as advertising, shareholders, showrooms, dozens of sales staff, etc. etc. etc. He also wants to get a good reputation so that he gets repeat business by word-of-mouth, he also wants to make sure his not pricing himself out of the market compared to the local competition.  The same is true for most trades - the big double-glazing companies are notorious for this, but it's the same for pretty much all trades.

dontmess666

Maybe I was previously naive. But it never occurred to me to use a local tradesman. When people think of national outfits, they assume they are getting quality, reliability and superior service. The issue of advertising overheads aside, my experience has shown that not to be the case.

EssexExile

dontmess666 said:

Maybe I was previously naive. But it never occurred to me to use a local tradesman. When people think of national outfits, they assume they are getting quality, reliability and superior service. The issue of advertising overheads aside, my experience has shown that not to be the case.

You are right, they do. They are invariably wrong.

Davesnave

We got some quotes from various well-known suspects and found their stuff was £thousands more than we wanted to pay. A local chap and IKEA's Pax system achieved all we needed to kit out a dressing room for a fraction of the price.

grumbler

dontmess666 said:

Treat people like fools.

As the companies are here for decades, this just proves how many fools are around. And these companies aren't alone. Many companies do basically the same. Bookies pray for fools and ban anyone with some brain. All introductory offers exist for the same reason to some degree.

Rosa_Damascena

I don't find decent chippies to be particularly cheap though. Is £300 per day reasonable?

floppydisk1

Rosa_Damascena said:

I don't find decent chippies to be particularly cheap though. Is £300 per day reasonable?

For a decent chippie it is reasonable, as you get £ 300 worth of work done. That amount is not what they earn, that is their turnover ( they have to cover van, tools, public liability insurance, diesel, van insurance and tax, national insurance and personal tax, pension, put money aside for some holidays - unlike employed person who gets it covered by their employer , advertising, accountant  etc... )  they earn what's left after those costs have been covered. 
 You can always chose a " chippie " who charges half that ... and get half as good a job.

Sandtree

dontmess666 said:

Maybe I was previously naive. But it never occurred to me to use a local tradesman. When people think of national outfits, they assume they are getting quality, reliability and superior service. The issue of advertising overheads aside, my experience has shown that not to be the case.

I am not sure that the majority think they are getting a superior service but I do think that they believe they will get a reliable service and a effectively a known quality even if not the best quality.

There are far too many TV programs about rouge builders etc and people therefore think they have a choice of buying from a national that will probably be "ok" or buying from an unknown local who could be anywhere on the spectrum of a total con artist to amazing service and quality.

When we were looking to do our kitchen, unfortunately on hold again, the fitting prices being charged by the kitchen company were far too high but it was a struggle to know which locals would do a good job. We have had several locals do certain jobs for us and whilst they've all been functionally fine in the end one made a total mess of the job (and asked for more money), two did robust but ugly jobs  and only one was both functionally and aesthetically pleasing. For electrics, plumbing etc not the end of the world things but for kitchen fitting, tiling etc you need both.

TELLIT01

With any company you are at the mercy of the fitter when the quality of installation is in question. It could be argued that you have more chance of getting a large company to sort a problem, than to have a 'one man band' accept that their work is substandard.

We had wardrobes from Hammonds some years ago and are very happy with them.  The one bit of BS we did get from the 'designer' was that the wardrobes would be exactly the same length as the ones being removed.  Important because the picture rail had been cut when the previous wardrobes were installed.  When I checked the final installation they were a couple of inches short so the missing bit of picture rail was on view.  When I took this up with the installer and explained that I had been told a filler would be used to get the right length he looked at me as if I was mad and stated the units are fixed sizes and they don't use fillers.  In the event, the issue was easily resolved as I just used a piece of the picture rail which had been removed when the wardrobes were installed.

dontmess666

KeithSussex said:

Why is getting work done in our loved houses such a problem ?

Ok, things can go wrong. The buyer of goods-services needs a contract bespoke to what they are having done, include words like high quality finish. So many more.
Use companies registered on a Redress scheme,  pay some of the job on a credit card (deposit) . Safe guard yourself.

Not as simple as that i'm afraid. Terms like 'high quality finish' is hugely subjective. What you might reasonably view as high quality might not be shared with others, including your fitters. And i suspect the majority of tradepeople dont accept credit card payments.
If the conversation is a fair representation, it shows despite all the promises and advertising budgets, its your experience with your personal tradesman which determines a successful installation. Which is why using a company like Hammonds, which uses random outsourced tradesman which are not vested in the company, is like Russian Roulette.