Should I dump Wren Kitchens

[Maidenmum]

We have had a kitchen planned out by Wren but it seems like we could get similar quality at about 2/3 of the price from DIY Kitchens or Ikea.

My husband isn't sure that we should leave Wren but it seems like a big difference in money for little to no quality difference.

Has anyone used any ofbthese company's who can confirm who I should go with?

AIBU to dump Wren ?

We used Benchmarx and were happy but whoever you go with I strongly strongly recommend using your own kitchen fitter and not the shop's one.

I used to work on the assembly line at wren. I wouldn't say quality of units are bad, but it depends which assembly line build them, some people take more care than others. Some managers are more focused on numbers.
I know there is a lot of complaints online but at the time I left they were building over 1000 units per day per assembly line (6 at the time I left), so in comparison there will be a lot of kitchens that go out smoothly that you don't hear about

We got a local company to do ours who had the same supplier as to John Lewis. We went to look at the kitchen in JL but then had it fitted for about a third less, and in less time.

I had my kitchen, flooring and appliances fitted by Wren in 2013. Had a new fridge and dishwasher last year, but apart from that it looks like it was installed last week. Couldn’t fault them.

I couldn’t be more impressed with our DIY kitchen, it’s much better quality than my parents wicks kitchen and our friends benchmarx kitchen that were all fitted at a similar time. I avoided wren as I’d heard nothing but bad things about them. We actually ended up fitting our kitchen ourselves as it was so simple when the units came assembled, we only had to get someone in to do the work tops.

My experience with Wren was pretty dreadful. The kitchen is OK but the fitters..... eventually we threw them out and got our own builder to finish the fitting

Definitely not. Dump them and run. Awful company and rubbish quality. My friend spent a fortune on a wren kitchen last year and it has been awful.

A friend of DH's is a qualified electrician and joiner and makes most of his money by fixing botched Wren kitchens.

neither! howdens are fab

I used Wickes to for units. Went to see wren too in exploration stage but bad reviews put me off tbh.
Sourced all the aplliances and worktops myself as well. I think having a good fitter is what matters, there will always be unexpected issues/weird corners etc to deal with and if the fitter is good, source of units themselves matters less. I didn’t trust store supplied fitters so i got one recommended by a friend and he was absolutely awesome.

I had a really good experience with Wren..

Got ours done a year ago. We went and got quotes from Wren, Wickes, Howdens and B&Q. In the end we found our own fitter and planned and bought from DIY kitchens. The cabinets came ready assembled - very pleased with it and it was much more cost effective than the others.

If we'd not gone with DIY Kitchens then we would have used Howdens - but I thought DIY had a better range and more options.

Ditch them!! We were quoted 19000 from them Howdens 13000. Eventually went to b&q for £9000. Same make of cabinets.
A fool and their money.........

That was so useful thank you I played at 1.75 speed the guy talks pretty slow but amazingly useful thank you again

Worth noting that if you are within reasonable travelling distance of Barnsley /Doncaster /Wakefield then DIY kitchens has a showroom you can visit. It was a bit of a trek for us but worth going as they have all of the different configurations available so you can see how they work in real life. They also have little samples of the cabinet finishes that you can take away with you, to see what the colour looks like in the light in your home (the original colour I liked looked awful in the daylight in our house).

I normally hate IKEA but we got a kitchen from them and they were great - professional, reasonably priced, quartz worktop, deep cupboards, pull out drawer, cupboards to fit small spaces...

Kitchen in our previous house was Wickes and really good quality. We used DIY in our current house and would definitely recommend.

We looked at Ikea but the thing that put us off is that the units have no void at the back for services - it isn't an issue if you run your pipes etc on the floor but we already had basic services installed and it would have been a pain to move them - something to be aware of.

Thank-you everyone it's been very useful to hear everyone's views and experiences. It does seem a little too easy to find bad experiences of Wren and they are definitely not the cheapest.

Our current kitchen is an Ikea one we put in 18 years ago. Its been fine but is getting pretty tired and aftrt a few swap around of white goods we realised we really need to replace it to make everything flow. We did fit the Ikea one ourselves and it was easy BUT we do have void spaces that irritated me when we put it in and still irritate me now. Ikea just have too limited a selection of sizes to make the kitchen work for me.

I think we will go with DIY kitchens the price is a decent 2/3 of the 'best" proce Wren could make it and that was after a manager came ro press some buttons to make it less! I hate the messing about and games about the price and the oh you need to put a deposit down in the next feq days for this price etc.

Where did you source your quartz worktop? I’d like to replace our dated worktop but it’s a veritable jungle looking at sellers.

We placed an order for a kitchen with Wren and placed a deposit. After this, the customer service was awful to the point where we were nearly at the end of the cooling off period and they still hadn't confirmed the full cost. We decided to cancel the order and they put a lot of pressure on us not to. They genuinely didn't seem to understand that we didn't want to sign a contract for an unspecified final cost, it was ridiculous!

Our DIY kitchen is 7 and looks as good as new.

And DIY kitchens are not flat packed.

I got mine from Al Murad in the end. I got a few quotes and was going to go with Gemini originally, but Al Murad were cheaper by about £1500.

We love the kitchen.It's really the customer service after the sale that's the problem. The showroom and design people are great. But the sub-contractor that was supposed to collect all the old kitchen rubbish didn't collect it all, and despite repeated efforts (to include by their showroom staff) never came back. And the installers are independent contactors, so when things go wrong, Wren doesn't take responsibility.