John Lewis of Hungerford kitchen reviews

[anukfranz2015]

After reading previous John Lewis of Hungerford reviews we decided to buy our kitchen from the Harrogate show room in the winter sale. We had awful customer service and communications straight after we had paid the commissioning deposit. Hidden costs in the invoice and a cabinet that jumped up £1000 from one invoice to the next without explanation. Then when the fitters arrived 3 cabinets were missing, 4 were damaged and we've not been informed as to when we'll get replacements. We used the JLH fitters to get the maximum warranty but they put in broken electrical sockets, hung someone else's cabinet (totally different style from the rest of the cabinetry) and brought fleas into my house. The part of the kitchen that is complete is lush and I'm thrilled with the work table, despite that I would not use them again as this has been a very stressful experience.

[bilbodog]

Oh - so sorry to hear of your experience. I haven't ever used them and don't think I will in future if I am ever in the lucky position to be able to do a new kitchen again! I do hope it gets sorted quickly and then you can forget all the horror and enjoy your new kitchen.

In the meantime I would go as high up the chain as you can get to put in formal complaints, in writing, to see if this will quicken things up.

Good Luck.

[anukfranz2015]

Hi,

Thank you for your advice it's good to have support. As if it isn't hard enough to have a new kitchen fitted with two kids under 4y in the house. Fingers crossed it will get sorted soon. I wonder if this is what most kitchen companies are like?

[gillviola]

Just to say that we bought a kitchen from the Harrogate showroom and they could not have been more help. We had nothing but first class service from beginning to end and even though we did not use their fitters, the sales person was on the other end of the phone and was really helpful on the odd occasion when we needed them. To be honest I couldn't fault them.

[Copper1]

John Lewis of Hungerford took over 3 1/2 months to complete a kitchen we were told would take 5 days to install. They changed the starting date three times without even consulting us. The customer service was dreadful as they kept telling us we were a 'high priority' but in reality we were moved to the bottom of the list having to wait and chase them. The project was passed among 3 designers as one left the company after the other. There is no way I could recommend this company for what they charge you would expect more professionally.

[RosieHead]

My J.L.of H. kitchen is about 3 years old and the paint is peeling off 3 of the cupboard doors. They are sending me some paint to touch them up or I can buy new doors at a "reduced price". Apparently it's my fault because I let them get wet. So - not really suitable for use in a kitchen or utility room! Cannot recommend!

[FirstTimeR0und]

Like some of the other posters we had a really poor experience with a John Lewis of Hungerford kitchen fitting early this year. Some of the cabinetry was ex-display but a good chunk was brand new. We were told installation would take three weeks. THREE MONTHS later, the kitchen was finally complete. There was minimal project management once the fee was paid - for example, a wooden worktop turned up on a day when no fitters were was scheduled to be there (we had moved out), and when things did not work as expected (such as magic corner units, pull out larder jamming) we had to push and push for the problems to be sorted out. The pull-out larder was ex-display and when it didn't work we were initially told it was "sold as seen" (it was working when we saw it in the shop!). When my husband (a solicitor) questioned the contract terms about this, it transpired that it was an item we hadn't paid for so the company would kindly pay for half of a new replacement if we stumped up the rest (we did). Not that we could tell what we had actually paid for because their paperwork is baffling. All this time we had the contents of our larder laid out on the dining room table. There were other issues that were also dragging on.
Week after week went past and after eventually deciding being nice was getting us nowhere fast, we escalated all the issues to a senior manager, who, over a period of about a month, kept telling us our case was a "high priority"...(sound familiar?). The kitchen does look amazing, but the experience achieving it was one we do not ever want to repeat.