Can anyone tell me about Moben/Magnet kitchens?

[littlemisslozza]

Putting in a kitchen, as the title suggests, we've had Moben round and they came up with a great design and a very reasonable price. Going to try Magnet too. Any horror stories with these companies or any recommendations please?
Thanks!

[Openbook]

Magnet (Stockport) were fine until it came to the tiling. The fitter was a complete numpty at tiling and we had to have it done again. Magnet covered the cost but it was a pain and why did they let it happen? Units are good but fairly pricy for us.

[duckyfuzz]

we had a moben kitchen fitted in the summer and I have no complaints about the kitchen or the fitter, all good work and lovely finished product. If you need building work doing, as we did, I would suggest finding your own builder by word of mouth, as the one they tried to get us to use was far more £££ and completely useless at meeting deadlines, so we used our own

[littlemisslozza]

Thanks, that's good to know. We already have our own builder lined up but that's good advice.

[mussyhillmum]

When we bought our house, a new Moben kitchen had been recently fitted. Less than 18 months later it was falling apart and we had to replace it. I have heard several bad reports about fitters used by Moben/ Sharps/ Dolphin (same company) as well. Have a really good look at the units, particularly the thickness of the carcasses, hinges and drawers. Going for the cheapest now may be a false economy in the long run.

[dinoroar]

I had a Moben kitchen put in a couple of years ago (in my previous house). I would say, don't go near Moben. It was horrendous from start to finish. If you search MN you will find other Moben horror stories.

It was a while ago and I have tried to delete it from my memory, but the bare bones are this:

nice salesman
reasonable price
kitchen taken out as scheduled by builders
moben due the following day to fit new one
moben do not show up
moben get a subcontractor to call me to arrange another time (in a week or so whilst kitchen is rubble)
I could not contact moben directly (phones not answered)
I COULD contact my salesman but he said that company policy banned him from any involvement whatsoever after the actual sale and he could not help me or he would lose his job
moben insisted on delivering kitchen parts into my lounge (so they didn't get stolen from locked garage ) - being new to this sort of stuff, I just let them - silly me
lounge floor damaged
wrong taps delivered
variety of other wrong parts delivered
tap installed with hot on right, refused to change it round
job overrun
overall kitchen itself = adequate, not great, not crap
much DIY work done by us to get it finished properly

If I had a kitchen done again (current one is 12yrs old in this house so hoping it can last a while longer), I would employ someone who local people had recommended. I would also micro manage the job and trust noone! I would ask all my neighbours to recommend and I would be very careful before getting someone in.

I would prefer to have no kitchen than to have Moben in ever again. Not really, but it was horrible!

Received £100 compensation. Nowhere near enough for stress caused and lack of cooking facilities whilst they messed up their bookings.

Moben have a poor reputation and my story is commonplace.

[dinoroar]

Oh, and Moben didn't deliver enough tiles. Then they delivered another box of BROKEN ones! It took 3 deliveries to actually have enough usable tiles!

[FiveGoMadInDorset]

If you have a builder, have you thought of a Howdens kitchen? We have just had one put in and are very please with it.

[littlemisslozza]

Oh dear dinoroar! We won't be buying from them, don't worry. We've decided to buy one and have our own carpenter to fit it. It's an old house and we just don't want to take a risk with shoddy workmanship.
Will look up Howdens, never heard of them.

[scaryteacher]

Have had a Magnet kitchen for 10 years and it is still fine. They were the only company who didn't want to come and design the kitchen - I told them what I wanted, chose the finish, got a discount for cash and they delivered it.

It survived 7 years of me and then the 3 years the house has been let, and it still look sfine each time I go back to the house.

[MillyMollyMoo]

Howdens are fantastic, throughly recommend there products, using the moben design ;-)

[MadameCastafiore]

Moben came round said oooohhhh £22k to replace your kitchen as you want it - said oooohhhh that's a bit much - well if you sign tonight we can do it for £11k - we said 'There's the door mate!'

Any company that behave like that will never ever get any business from me!

[smittenkitten]

we got one through magnet trade (our builder bought it through his trade account) we had a design which was adapted as the build changed slightly and the trade people redesigned. they never came to measure up - just worked from scale plans and everything has fitted fine. you have to be more proactive and do your research though as they don't 'sell' you anything and you need to know what you want. we got one from their most expensive range for half the price that the showroom had quoted in their half price sale. builder's joiner fitted it, again less than half the price of magnet fitting.

[littlemisslozza]

Thanks everyone. Magnet trade coming tomorrow, Howdens coming next week.

[hellyhanson]

I have had a magnet kitchen this year and I really like the quality and the style. However, they really messed up on the worktop ordering (they sent the wrong company) and took 2 months to sort it out, during which time we had to use mdf boards. They were useless in sorting it out, this was in July and they are still sorting the issue out now (we have the worktop but can't agree the bill). I find their customer service to be quite dreadful. A friend has used Howdens and rated that experience well.

[scubagoose]

be interested to know how you got on littlemissLozza. We are having an extention and new kitchen and Im looking at Magnet and Howdens..

[MadameGazelle]

Would second Howdens - just had white high gloss kitchen fitted with solid wood worktops and it is gorgeous , great kitchen designers and v reasonable prices. No hard sell either as you buy through your own fitter. HTH

[ettebel]

This is an update to an earlier post with a bit more flesh on it.

This relates to an Innsbruck kitchen bought from Magnet Lichfield branch in Staffordshire.

We had a good start with magnet. The Sales staff were pleasant and helpful and after 3 iterations we got the design exactly as we wanted it.

We opted for the Innsbruck kitchen. We did want the Studio White but this was £2,000 more expensive.

We paid a total of £7,169.

They asked us to pay all the money up front which we weren't happy with, but did because they were a large and supposedly reliable national firm. We had a magnet kitchen before but a friend fitted it - this time we had moved area so this option wasn't available and we went with their Magnet fitter to get the guarantees.

With hindsight we would never pay up front again even with a big national because once they have your money there is no incentive for them to put right any snagging items.

The fitter's first efforts weren't good. The worktop wasn't fitted right, end panels also not right, doors not adjusted properly, and the worktop had both manufacturing marks and tool marks in it, two of the doors were warped, plus other minor issues.

After that fitting it took 8 weeks to get the same fitter back in - after 2 further site meetings and numerous phone calls and e-mails badgering them to get it sorted out. So we lived with all our kitchen stuff in the dining room for 8 weeks. this was because the worktops were coming out and new ones were being fitted, which meant a lot of disruption. No point putting all our stuff back in at that point.

The fitter wasn't known to the branch but recommended from another branch because our branch (Lichfield, Staffs) had a lot of response to the sale offers. We debated with our contact at Lichfield whether to have him back for some time, and eventually decided (with misgivings) that we would give him a chance to rectify the faults.

Then when the guy came back he offered no apology for the standard the first time around, blamed everything else but himself and STILL didn't do it right. In fact we had some different issues after he left to the first time!

Another site meeting and snagging list later, numerous e-mails to fix a date which never arrived, people going on leave without doing what they promised first, a visit from a new fitter (a good one this time), then a visit from the customer services manager, and then the fitter back for the last time to provide an adequate solution. All in all from fitting to resolution took over 3 MONTHS.

There have been some plus points. We got a good design. We opted for Magnet because they did the extra tall wall units in many of their ranges, and having a small kitchen meant extra storage was really important. Using the extra tall units also gave us the ability to use the space over the doors with 300mm deep top boxes, giving even more space and making the kitchen feel much larger.

So the kitchen achieved the storage and look we wanted, but it should not have taken 3 months to achieve it. It is only because I would not give in that we got where we are now. However it has been stressful and depressing at times, and what annoyed us most of all was phone calls not answered, calls not returned after messages left, poor communication between staff and e-mails also not replied to.

We even got to the stage of threatening legal action and contacting the local paper to see if they wanted our story.

Magnet offered £400 towards the cost of finishing off the kitchen as a goodwill gesture. Welcome as it will pay for much of the tiling but it's a bit 'too little too late'.

I would not recommend them and will never use their service again. If you like their ranges I would do what we did the first time and det a design, then have a local fitter (who comes with a local recommendation and can give references/photos) buy it trade and install it for you.

The last time we did this we got a better quality kitchen for a larger kitchen installed for £2,500 less than we paid this time round. And it was done in less time even though our friend had to do most of the work at weekends.