I bought a kitchen from IKEA for a flat we'd bought for my student son
in Nov 98 and had to wait for the sink unit which was exclusive to the
VARDE base at the time. It did not arrive on the promised delivery date
when our builder had a slot to fit it. I then asked for their builders
to do it. They came in eventually 6 weeks later and firstly fitted flooring
which I'd also purchased from IKEA, so badly it had to be thrown out as
we could not save it. It was birch laminate and they left such huge ragged
gaps all around it could not even have a beading fitted to disguise it.
Prior to fitting I instructed them to take off the skirting board and
fit the flooring to the wall but they ignored this. There was also a piece
missing about a foot long by the entrance and I would have had to buy
a full new pack to finish it, though I had purchased plenty for the size
of the room. Funnily enough there was not one single piece of offcuts
to be seen when we went to see the "work", but lots of their
other rubbish! They then fitted the kitchen on top of this flooring and
the specification was all wrong!
They did not leave sufficient room at the end of the run of unts to fit
the Fridge freezer despite a squared paper design faxed prior and given
to them on site!! When we used the oven to re heat some food during that
first visit ( foolishly thinking we could decorate), the socket fuses
all blew . They'd simply fitted a 13 amp plug to the oven despite the
manufacturer specifying it required a 16 amp exclusively. This meant that
my son could not move in and he had already spent a further 8 weeks paying
rent in a flat he did not need and we were paying a mortgage on the flat
we'd bought for him to live in! After much wrangling and extremely painful
attempts at communication I finally talked to a guy callled Martin at
at Thurrock where the sink unit was coming from and he offered to re fit
the units free of charge but wait for it - we would have to pay for the
flooring!!
I was so desperate at the time I agreed initially, but my partner thought
better of it and got a professional in to do the electrics. In January,
we went and took out everything and re fitted the units ourselves. We
also discovered that they had actually pierced a hole in the waste of
the kitchen sink (which had already been fitted into the floor in prior
preparation) which caused a horrendous gurgling noise every time the sink
was used and they probably would not have re-done that anyway. I have
NEVER purchased a single item from IKEA since and that is the way to "hurt"
them.
I am now on flat number two and looking to buy a kitchen for it . Having
been to the usual rivals which charge a zillion pounds for things like
"infills" and "end panels"(a magnet kitchen which
has only 15mm carcases would cost me in excess of £1,000.00 for
panels for a seven unit kitchen ouch! and that was with their 50% "sale"
which ended yesterday at 5 pm), I signed on the web to have a look at
the IKEA kitchens again because (I'm foolishly thinking) the first kitchen
looks funky and did not cost a fortune!!
However, I found this, as well as other complaint sites which reminded
me of the trauma and expense it cost me at the time! The actual units
may have been cheaper and funkier for the money, but it was three months
of extra rent before my son could move in, our travel to and from the
flat for different 'builders' at a time when I had my 12 year old daughter
at home with a serious back injury and we'd had the builders in our own
house for some months It was over christmas and our bedroom was out of
commission and our home was greatly disrupted. These factors bumped the
price (in trauma as well as hard cash) up in excess of an acceptable level.
the kitchen after all actually only has a Varde sink unit and oven housing
and three glass wall cupboards! Thank you for reminding me of my experience
I'm off to MFI tomorrow to buy that kitchen!
Dolores Mulkerrins
