Help! Magnet retail versus trade/builder

[cocoachannel]

Hi everyone

We have had a quote for a kitchen from Magnet retain which comes in just short of £16,500.

Our builder who is doing other work in the house has quoted £10,000 for the 'same' kitchen.

DH and I are both rubbish at anything like this so are nervous of the huge price difference meaning shoddy quality. Does anybody know if this sounds about right?

Builder hasn't started the other work but came with excellent refs...

Thank you!

Does he mean that he would get identical kitchen but a trade rate from Magnet? If so, jump at it. Many retailers, especially ones in building supplies, do offer huge trade discounts (just look at the pitches on Dragons Den to see what the difference is between trade and retail prices, it's shocking).

Does the price include fitting? Is that where you worry there might be a problem? If so, I wouldn't - most kitchen suppliers hire in fitters and their work is of very variable quality - if you are happy with your builder's work so far, I'd stick with him and his team.

Thanks Lala. Yes the quote included installation by magnet appointed contractors, which I hear bad things about.

DH is an accountant and I work in business risk so we may be overanalysing what looks like too good a deal but I think it just demonstrates Magnet's margins are higher than I'd anticipated!

last time I got a Magnet kitchen, the trade discount varied a bit from item to item, but was in the 50%-60% range.

Note that some of the Trade ranges of kitchens have plain white or beige cabinets. There is a different catalogue for trade ranges that does not include all the designs in the retail catalogue, so they are presumably a bit cheaper anyway. I had one of their more expensive solid-wood ones, and it came with retail woodgrain cabinets as it was not in the Trade catalogue.

With a kitchen the quality of fitting makes a vast difference to the finished job. It's my belief that a skilled joiner is better than a kitchen fitter. It's also preferable to have a profesional electrician and plumber in first, kitchen fitters are notorious for non-compliant and shoddy work out of sight behind the cabs.

Kitchen fitters do seem to work out rather expensive, I suppose because they offer an end-to-end service and/or because householders don't know what things really cost.

Thanks John