Would you buy another kitchen from Wickes?

I wouldn't. First, on the positive side, the in-store staff have been helpful and pleasant; and the quality of the kitchen units themselves is reasonable to good. On the other hand, I allowed myself a full month after the delivery on 30 May of what was supposed to be my complete kitchen to install it, and now find myself going back to work tomorrow with the kitchen still in chaos:

- Salesman didn't sell me all the right bits at the time. Supplemental orders take as long as the original to arrive.

- One unit arrived damaged. It took three more tries to get it right (second unit damaged too; third one was the wrong item).

- One crucial bit (worktop) had to be on a supplemental order. On the day of delivery I was told it was too damaged to deliver. I was given a new date. Nothing arrived; apparently they were "out of stock". I was promised a call within the following day to reschedule. No call. I called them. Date now rearranged - for nearly two weeks after I go back to work.

Add this to the experience of the "customer service" call centre, whose staff (if you can ever finally get through to them) - with one or two welcome exceptions - manage to make it quite clear that they hate their jobs and couldn't give a stuff whether you get what you've paid for or not.

Still, I suppose it could have been worse - I could have gone to Ikea.

Is my experience typical? Am I being unreasonable in finding it unacceptable?

Reply to
rrh
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You wouldn't go to Wickes or Ikea - so where would you go?

Reply to
Snowman
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Ikea? You could have gone to Magnets, and have the staff insult you to your face in the shop.

Reply to
Huge

Actually I was going to recommend Ikea, mainly because wickes / MFI use the same delivery firm and we had endless problems with them, all 4 orders we had from wickes/MFI had missing part, damaged bits,didn't turn up etc. The service we had from Ikea was delightful in comparison, although our kitchen was stocked in store we opted to have it delivered, in total there were over

200 bits, and all arrived, and every thing fitted with no damage, the delivery guys even spent about an hour with me checking all the bits were present before signing for it (I think the cups of tea helped!). The only problems we had we that I drilled the holes in the wrong places on a door, which as each unit is modular resulted in me sending the wife to the store to get a new door front. Took the weekend to fit the main units and are delighted with the results.

Jon

Reply to
Jonathan Pearson

I would back up the quality of the IKEA stuff. I order it up from the store which is the painful part, but once you get it, I found it all fits perfectly, nothing damaged, and I've never had any need to adjust anything, although there are lots of adjusters on hinges, drawer fronts, etc.

If I could order it on the Web and pick it up directly from the warehouse without the pain of having to go into the store and dealing with the staff, queues, etc, they would be on to a real winner.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Absolutely not. By now I would have cancelled the transaction with the credit card company and told them that they can come and collect it.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Reply to
Andy Hall

You need to hassle them on this. If you've got another one of the same item just say it's damaged and you move to the front of the queue.

Never had this. All replacements were correct, though they did lose the order for one replacement bit.

They are dreadfully overloaded. I think they have been more successful in selling kitchens than they expected (must be really - if they relied on sales of small items in our store they'ed have gone out of business years ago)

Possibly - but definitely unacceptable. SHOUT LOUDER !!!!!!

Reply to
G&M

Yes you are. But in my experience I think this is now the norm when dealing with any of these types of companies. Their systems and processes are designed to cope with 'perfect' deliveries. As soon as anything goes wrong their exception handing just isnt in place.

I purchased my current kitchen cabinets from BandQ. Very happy with the product, it looks good and performs well - but I made sure that every item I wanted was stocked in my local store so I could examine it in store and take it home with me. I opened every box in store and checked for damage. There was no way I would order anything from then and expect them to deliver it correctly and undamaged. I 'know' it just wont happen. Sad.

Reply to
William Joones

My experience on around 5 IKEA kitchens is that they deliver everything you ordered intact, also there is never any bits missing. Have I been fortunate?

Reply to
Ed Sirett

No he isn't at all. All the time that people accept this kind of poor quality service, damaged goods, lack of a system to correct things expeditiously and are willing to waste hours on trying to help the supplier fix their broken systems and products, nothing will change.

The only way to start to address this is for them to suffer the loss of revenue of cancelled orders, having to explain cancelled transactions to credit card companies and the cost and inconvenience to them of having to collect goods.

If sufficient people do this, then eventually they will get the message and do something. Sadly there is a British disease of putting up with poor and damaged product and even worse service without complaint or compensation.

THere needs to be an attitude change all around here.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Reply to
Andy Hall

And still get the order wrong, over and over again.

Five delivery attempts from Magnet. They never once delivered the original order. Nor oddly enough would they take back the goods they delivered that were wrong. I ended up trading kitchen units with other customers until I got the combination of doors and carcasses that I wanted.

Then I vowed never, ever to use Magnet again.

They still owe me a draining board, salad bowl and chopping board.

Reply to
Steve Firth

I've not bought much from IKEA as I hate the shopping 'experience' there, but one thing I did buy was a computer workstation in pine for the workshop. And the runners for the keyboard shelf were missing. The time taken to go through their returns procedure just to get replacements put me off them for ever - I've not been back since.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Well, true to a point. Still leaves him with the problem of time booked off for a job and no kitchen. And the whole process then has to start again with someone else who may not be any better anyway...

Darren

Reply to
dmc

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I got my kitchen from Wickes, They did not deliver the doors at first, but they turned up the next day by parcel force ( must have cost them a bomb!) Also I had an odd number of draw runners, but luckily I by passed any call centre and someone from my local branch just sent me the one I needed. I got the worktop from B&Q , nothing turned up damaged..

The sales guy managed to sell me all the pelemet and cornice stuff that I have still not got around to fitting..

The units themselves are quite good, nice solid doors and quite sturdy cabs. They were 50% off too ( sort of a continual sale thing they seemed to be doing for about 6 months a year!)

If / When I do another kitchen I think I might just get the 'off the shelf' stuff, which I guess I could just purchase as I was ready for it.

Not too bad an experience all in all though.

Simon

Reply to
SimonP

I think so. I like Ikea kitchens and have installed 2 of them, but my experience (UK and Italy) is that they never quite have everything in stock. Also I was short changed by 3 packs of hinges on the latest visit.

But, overall on a cost for you get basis I'm happy with them. I just make sure that I never, ever visit at peak times.

Reply to
Steve Firth

You can trust them. I ordered my B&Q kitchen on the web and it was all delivered with no shortages or damage on the day they said it would be. No missing/damaged components found on assembly either. I still had to make a few trips to the nearest B&Q warehouse to get the bits I forgot to order, as the local store doesn't carry the whole range.

MBQ

Reply to
MBQ

You did better than me. Two days of staying in (not me fortunately) then the 'special favours' department got a new date 'just' ten days later. Can't fault the product though.

For anyone living to the west of London it is worth knowing that B&Q Yeading (2 miles from M4 J3) has a much better stock than any other B&Q I know of including various 'to order' doors on the shelf. I know that it wouldn't help everyone but in the major conurbations I don't know why they don't allocate one non-stock range to each branch (e.g. New Malden would have Birch; Chiswick, Old Oak) so that people who are prepared to travel a few miles can get what they want now.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

So you go for compensation on top....

You won't get it in full for the time wasted, but it is possible to get something.

Whenever I have had an issue like this I ask the supplier for some compensation. For example:

- Glass doors of cost £700 delivered several times incorrectly made and time wasted. Compensation £150.

- B&D Scorpion saw of cost about £60 (IIRC). Faulty and replaced. Faulty again so refunded and voucher for £20

- Shirt from Marks and Spencer. Check on stock made over the phone and trip made to store. Turned out not to be in stock. £10 compensation in cash.

Again it's the same principle. Try to recover some of the cost and make sure that it costs the supplier something. The more people that do this, the better.

It *is* possible to get products supplied at good prices, undamaged and complete. After all if you go into B&Q or anywhere else the sales person is not likely to say that the product has bits missing or is damaged. It is reasonable to get what the product is described to be. If it falls short of that, then the supplier should correct it and compensate for the inconvenience and out of pocket cost to address the issue. After all, they do not say in the leaflet that the product might be broken or have bits missing do they.

To be honest it does not occur to me to expect anything less from a supplier than what they have agreed to do which is to sell a complete and unbroken item.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Reply to
Andy Hall

Thats somewhat of a typo! I meant to say:

'No you are not'.

then continue with the rest of my rant about how bad these companies are.

Reply to
William Joones

Yeah, fine is you can cancel the holiday booked or you don't need the item. It still doesn't get you a kitchen at the end of the day.

I'm not defending the supplier at all and I would certainly be after compensation but for things like the worktops I would attempt to find another supplier who can deliver when needed and then get the original supplier to pay up + something for the hassle. Of course, the problem with this is that often it is difficult to actually find anyone high enough to ok this. Standing in the store informing other prospective customers can be quite productive though in my experience :)

I agree. I suspect that sending the entire lot back in this case may well cause more grief than it solves to the OP.

Thats what I mean. Sending the whole lot back means no kitchen. Sourcing the extra/missing bits elsewhere if possible and billing the difference

  • compensation strikes me as still hurting the company yet still leaving the OP with a kitchen. Of course, if the missing/short parts are not avaiable elsewhere then it is a bit of a different matter.

Nor me. It is however worth compromising at times IMHO.

Changing tack slightly, resently bought an amp from richer sounds. Big tale of woe that I won't go into now but they have been great throughout. A big thumbs up for Richersounds customer service (hey, I'm a happy punter even though I still don't have a working amp!).

Some companies still do customer service...

Darren - (ob John lewis CS plug :)

Reply to
dmc

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