Sorry delay. Yes they were Duropal tops. My local Benchmarx will deliver worktops at no extra cost. Howdens would add a delivery charge (up here at least). I have always found Howdens prices competitive - except for their top of the range kitchens which I think are expensive for what they are.
I found the DIY kitchens carcasses better than Howdens. No point spending mega bucks on kitchen frontals if carcasses behind aren't as good.
Difference in price between different quality doors is going to be quite small in the scheme of things, decent quality worktops like quartz and appliances are going to make up a more significant chunk.
Hi, quick update re DIY kitchens. Not going to say too much , but they're having some problems honouring delivery dates and delivering the correct items. Seemed to start in April/May. Also poor quality control (delivery of damaged items, paint runs etc) and failing to replace missing /damaged items in reasonable time frames and failing to communicate with customers. If you check out their facebook page they've deleted a lot of posts
You sure,hard to believe? Not like DIY Kitchens,been faultless service when I've used them in the past,never had even had damaged items, was going to order another in next few months,think I'll wait & see what happens.
It's true I think KIAB. Overall i've been impressed with the quality but the kitchen I originally discussed is still awaiting a replacement panel. Multiple panels have been sent wrong on this job. Didn't bother me too much as it is my own project but not sure I could ever use them on a customers job. They pushed the dates back out for new orders earlier in the year as discussed to clear the backlog of replacement pieces to be shipped. The final panel I am awaiting is a base decor end which is only finished one side. Fine, till you get down to where the plinth meets it. My customer service person didn't hesitate to replace when requested but did have a little quip that "is this not the norm?". I explained that most manufacturers return the finish on the revers side for 3" or so to avoid this problem. There are a lot of problems I came across with them and I think surely this isn't the first time you've had this problem?!
A victim of their own success perhaps? A customer of mine had a few niggles with them recently - similar to above - completely resolved now in fairness.
Doesn't take long for a few bad reviews to spread around forums, social media,it is shame, hopefully the problems will be resolved & normal service will be resume shortly, otherwise they will go to the wall very quickly which will be a great loss.
I've been eyeing them up for some time but I'm so behind on projects I keep pushing back doing my kitchen. It seems they had various parts like their spraying etc break down in their factory leading to backlogs. Sounds like they're struggling to sort it all out, they have good intentions but it seems a bit chaotic, management need to get on top of it.
The email I received also indicated they were updating there facilities so hopefully onwards and upwards.like kiab says be a shame to lose reasonably priced competitor
Some years ago,I seen it with other another firm,only one spray booth,it broke down, spares had to come from somewhere in europe,took several weeks to sort,all could have been avoid if they had say two or even three spray booths. Then later they had further problems with a backlog of work, & still only one spray booth, they never learnt from their mistakes. Once you damage your reputation,it take a long time to rebuild it, some firms never recover from it.
Think maybe they've grown very fast and they don't have good systems in place . Their QC manager posted on LinkedIn that they'd installed a new spray line ( ? Italian) around April and from what O can gather it broke down. DIY kitchens, rather than communicate with their customers and just kept letting people down . Hence customers took to facebook. They've now said that they're going to start keeping stocks of some of the painted door ranges. Sounds like a good strategy when you're selling 400 plus kitchens a,week. Re systems, you order online and a cabinet is automatically " allocated" a door and cabinet and door are 1 item. When they send the order invoice for you to check every cabinet, door and drawer front are allocated separate item numbers. The delivery note is back to cabinet and door / drawer fronts as 1 item , and not with same item numbers as,the first online order. Not surprising that orders get messed up.
That one thing that annoyed me is their delivery/order notes, might be easily solved with bulk bar code/QR Code for each order,every item picked then gets a sticker. Wonder why Italian spray line,some good makes in UK like Junair,STL,or maybe German Ziehl-Abegg.
Yes , the delivery /order notes are a nuisance and make it difficult to reconcile what's delivered with your invoice. We had a couple of missing items and raised a ticket. The system produced your invoice ie with doors and frontals separate and you selected what was missing, but the warehouse must have just looked at the missing item as it was listed on the delivery note ,which was slightly different to the item we ordered, and delivered that item so we've gone from a missing item to the wrong item! Admittedly they got the 2 missing items out to us within 2 days of the original delivery, but their system's let them down again. More attention to detail needed. I'm not sure when they stopped using Second Nature doors and started producing their own, but that's a big shift up from just making cabinets from mass produced Egger board. The spray machine is CEFLA according to their QA managers post on Linkedin.
Some people have had big niggles eg 6 weeks on from original delivery date and still waiting for items.