January kitchen sale

[curious84]

Hi all!

Looking for a bit of advice as a bit clueless about kitchen buying / best way etc!

We're doing a gut renovation on our house in London- going to have a full contract with the winning contractor, supervised by our QS and architect. The latter have advised us to spec out the kitchen with a kitchen shop, but then leave it to the contractor to negotiate/have a contract with the kitchen supplier (as opposed to leaving the kitchen out of the tender, and 'supplying' the kitchen ourselves by having a contract with a kitchen shop.

-This initially seemed a bit odd to me, as if I've specced a kitchen shop, would they be incentivised to give the best price to the contractors who are quoting (as the kitchen shop presumably knows they've already 'won' the deal)? Is this right? Also the kitchen we've picked is from one of the major mid-to-high end German brands. Could we even just give the kitchen spec to the builder- and they could even go to a different shop?

-The sales person at the kitchen shop has put the hard sale about taking advantage of their January sale, 'best time to do it', 'can't guarantee will get as a good price another time' etc. For reference the 'full price' is 25-35k inc vat and fitting

1/ Any advice about dealing with a kitchen shop directly v putting it in the tender contract?

Tbh after the underwhelming discount (they went on and on about it when we met with a hard/pressure tactics), and then turns out theyre offering only 6-7% off a price presumably no one pays, my first though is to put the kitchen manufacturer in the contract, and leave it to the contractor to find the cheapest kitchen shop/supplier

2/ Are they being truthfull about the 6-7% January sale being the best time to buy it / Is this a 'good price'? We havent actually gone to any other kitchen shops in detail apart from to have a browse.. So have no idea whether this is a good price / deal or not..

Any help much appreciated!

[wowfudge]

Which kitchen supplier are you dealing with? If they have a trade counter, the builder will get a discount dependent on the amount of business he does with them. Some pass the discount on to the customer in full, some don't.

The advantage to getting the builder to source the kitchen is that the onus is on them should anything be missing, damaged, etc.

If you want a specific kitchen from a specific supplier you need to make this very clear.

[OnePlanOnHouzz]

I assume they want the builder to take responsibility for this to tie it into the time line.. and maybe the CDM if the architects are passing responsibility on for this to the principle contractor too ... But there's nothing to stop you shopping around with a specific design that you are happy with first though - then pass the quote onto the builder to deal with ... that way you are in control of what you get as you are ultimately paying for it !