Wren kitchens.

Long story short:

MFI - goes bust - Ebuyer buys the Hygena ranges from MFI, Wren kitchens goes bust - Ebuyer buys Wren kitchens and merges them with Hygena which was MFI kitchens and relocates the whole lot to Howden In Yorkshire....

Caveat Emptor

 

i havnt mate, no.

but im LOVING the Mr Ninja!

awesome

 

MFI kitchens were not THAT bad, they just could not deliver or provide any back up service.

Some of the same people that were at MFI are now at Wren.

I would not be first in the queue.

 

Will Wren be the new MFI?

Going back to cheap kitchens. Remember Hygena? The brand name of some MFI products. Well the Hygena brand was originally founded by a guy called Malcolm Healey who sold it to MFI for multi-millions of £'s.

He then went to America and did the same thing with a cabinet manufacturer there ... built it up and sold it for millions. He's also connected with the Ebuyer (IT and electrical goods) internet business in the UK ... which has started to sell cheap kitchens called Wren.

Wren has also opened up a few showrooms recently, at Aintree, Horwich (Bolton), Howden (E.Yorkshire) and Stevenage ... so you can go and have a look at the kitchens. They have colour matched, rigid carcasses with soft close (Metabox - or similar) drawers and standard melamine front edging (as far as I can tell). The spec isn't bad for the price ... and the marketing is brilliant (well I guess that's what Mr Healey is good at) ... question is ... what's their customer service like and how do they deal with problems and complaints? That's what lets most of the cheap and cheerful suppliers down ... and that's when their customers stop being so cheerful.

http://www.advancedkd.co.uk/blog/kitchen-news-updates

 

I was goingto buy from them but their lead time was 4 to 6 weeks delivery. The chap I spoke too was really helpfull and gave me a few hints. Spent about 20 mins talking to him.
The units come ready assembled with doors on (i think), the interior of the units are white and no other colour choice is available.

 

MFI were very courteous and professional when selling their product...it all went downhill rapidly once they took your cash!

 

I looked at Wren and was struck by how little the staff knew - though they were pleasant enough. When asked about the delivery time they replied it will be x date plus or minus 1 week from order. How can you plan trades etc with that loose a timescale.

I had them price a kitchen - roughly £3k. 3 days later they advertised 50% off so I had a look at my online quote..... To give 50% off they had increased the price by such an extent that the £3k kitchen would now cost £3.8k!!!

In my opinion a company who trade like this are well worth avoiding.

 

Avoid Wren kitchens like the plague! very poor customer service - Have a price checker against B & Q / Wickes etc Instore - That was out of date. I have heard horry stories about them shipping out part assembled kitchens (No doors, legs) with no customer call to inform. Average price with nothing to back it up with!

 

Horry? Is that really horrible?

 

I would agree - avoid Wren like the plague - absolutely terrible customer service, the worst I've ever come across. The quality of the goods is excellent - but if you have problem or need an extra part - you're in trouble.  I had a kitchen put in in June and needed an extra end panel.  Nearly FIVE MONTHS later and still not received a call telling me what's happened to it, spent hours on hold and still nobody can tell me why I've not received it.  No-one will take ownership of the problem. The regional manager replied to an e-mail once  telling me he would sort it out and its still not here!  No contact to say why not.  Even sent an e-mail to the director which was ignored!   Paid for it as well. V frustrating.

 

wren are quite a new company and with that come some teething problems. With the amount of investment malcom healy has put in himself its not a company that will take unhappy customers laying down. Have you spoken to the designer of your kitchen? what has he done about it? have they offered you any compensation for this delay? out of interest which store was it?  Most likely reason for you not receiving it would be that at the moment wren still have to rely on out sourced products and those suppliers have been less than co-operative....you will see a vast improvement when the new phase manufacturing lines open right here in the uk...all owned by wren.

 

Humm not really long story short because your story is wrong. The founder of wren owned hygena and sold it to MFI years and years ago. The founder of wren never had his finger in the MFI pie. I think you will find that homebase/argos have now bought the hygena range. 

 

A 'vast' improvement?

It would need to be! Things are appalling at present!

 

Pffft! I bet Wren kitchens will not be too pleased to see what millie@ wren has written!

 

Steer well clear!!!

 

Hi, I'm very surprised to hear all of this. We had a wren kitchen installed at the end of November. Yes there were the 50% off deals which I'm sure make no difference due to their price changes, but all home improvement companies do that (and yes it's very annoying). However, we shopped around for high quality kitchens (at least 18mm high density, soft close, pre-built etc...) and Wren was half the price of classic kitchens and magnet. We used the Chester showroom as it's the closest to Birmingham where we live.  As you can imagine this meant all problems/ changes needed to be done over the phone. There price matching of aplliances and kitchens was  brilliant (they matched the price of asda on hotpoint and we found the franke sink and tap for £100 cheaper on the net and they price matched that). We were having an extension done so exact measurements weren't possible until about 2 weeks before installation. Changes and advice was needed as a result and this wasn't a problem, the designer was very helpful. The kitchen came with all the little extras (like panel end tape and a spare panel) which we thought we wouldn't need but we did when putting the kitchen in, due to the odd shape of the original house part of the kitchen was going in.

Four to six weeks delivery for a made to order anything is actually quite good in my opinion (having worked in the car manufacturing industry). They do their deliveries themselves so only give you a week of delivery when you order then the week before once all their orders are in the plan a route and give you the exact day (again seems quite efficient and reasonable to me). They did arrive a bit late on the day because of a previous customer not telling them they lived in a flat, but they called before on the day to explain and give a new time of delivery (with all problems and changes, communication is key and they were excellent at that), the delivery drivers were very apologetic and worked extremely hard to unload everything at quite a late time.

Out of all the companies I used for our extension, Wren impressed me more than any other, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend  them in a heartbeat.

To summarise, I had great quality, great price, flexibility, friendly knowledgable staff, and the little things were done very well.

 

So looks like I'm not the only one who has had problems with Wren.

I had a kitchen delivered in December with 2 drawer fronts and 5 door fronts missing. I'm struggling to understand how a ready assembled kitchen can pass quality control when the doors haven't been fitted!

I contacted Wren the day the delivery arrived (15th December) to inform them of the problem and I was told they would try and get the missing parts sent out to me before Christmas but couldn't promise anything. I was then told that they would send the delivery to my nearest store to allow delivery last Saturday. It is now the 10th of Jan and I still dont have the missing fronts or a date for delivery. This is making life very difficult as I work offshore and won't be home to receive a delivery after this week.

I will be calling again today and will no doubt get fobbed off with a load of ******** as usual.

The product itself is good quality and well priced but the aftersales has been useless. I simply want the items delivered that I have already paid for.