A new Kitchen - Day 4

Today my lovely electrician has arrived to do the electrics. It is so good to have someone reliable who comes when he says & does a good job. What I didn't realise, because it wasn't made clear, was that he has to do all of the re-positioning of sockets & switches, putting in new ones, as well as the downlights & the cabinet lights. I thought all he had to do was move the sockets at floor level up to above the upstand & put in the downlights. Because the fitter didn't turn up on Monday they couldn't have a conversation about what exactly was involved & Rich has got a job he has to go on to.

This follows on from an email to the CEO, the Area Manager, & the showroom manager, because the fitter didn't turn up till 9am on Tuesday & after 10am on Wednesday having said he would be here at about 7.30. Then he was off site for over 2 hours on Thursday because he was called into the showroom for a discussion with a new installation manager & had to go and buy a plinth heater which he knew I wanted from the planning stage. Today both fitters have just left saying that they are just in the way of the electricians. Consequently, surprise surprise the job will overrun into next week.

This follows on from other issues.

• When the units were delivered first thing last Friday all the worktops were marked to follow. I queried it with the store about 9am & was told the laminate hadn't been available for a long time & they didn't have any date for new stock. I would have to have something else & pay extra. The manager chased it up & discovered that they were being made & would be ready to be couriered to me, arriving by about 4.30. They didn't arrive until early evening, around 7pm. I only just made it to an evening out.
• When the fitters arrived on Tuesday they discovered that the wine rack was missing. Eventually Wren said it would have to be fitted next week, but no one told the fitter. He went to the store to check what was happening, which was a complete waste of time.
• The glass splashbacks were not delivered apparently they are custom made to the specific measurements after the units are fitted. That's fine, but no one told the fitter who said he had never fitted them before.

The impression I am left with is that communication isn't just poor, it's non existent sometimes. It's not unusual in anything to do with building. Mine is quite a large, costly kitchen even at the sale price. I expect a quality product & a quality service for that. The overrun into next week, means I will have been camping upstairs for over 11 days. (I made life a lot easier for Wren by having a fitter take out the old kitchen before the new units arrived. If I hadn't forseen the problem, which Wren didn't, there simply would not have been room for the new units.)

Wren has a good product but I think they are expanding too fast to be able to deliver the sort of seamless, joined up, service discriminating customers expect. This just means that no one is happy. Not the customer & certainly not the designers, fitters & admin people who get it in the neck when things go wrong. This really needs sorting at the most senior level or Wren will get a bad reputation by word of mouth, not to mention today's modern communications.

I've waited for this kitchen since the end of December. That should be a long enough lead time to get it right. Now I just want my home back and a beautiful finished kitchen. Hopefully it will all have been worth it.