Dunster House Summerhouse

[Nepotism]

Has anyone used them? They have exactly what I'm looking for but the reviews on their website are all glowing, the ones on Google, not so much!

Or any other recommendations for Georgian windowed not ludicrously expensive summerhouses welcomed!

We got a potting shed from them last year. We were very wary from the Google reviews, and also from visiting their "showroom", which was an odd experience. However, we couldn't find exactly what we wanted elsewhere.

Because of the reviews, we spent ages checking the delivery before signing it off. We found a broken part, which we sent back with the delivery drivers, and wrote this clearly on their form, as well as taking photos. Dunster sent us a replacement part, although it was a bit of a faff.

Also, we had been advised that it would come with flooring. It didn't. We contacted Dunster, and they sent us some flooring after all, as their salesperson had advised us wrongly, and we had that in writing.

Therefore, although I was expecting the worst, and communications weren't great, I would use them again. And the potting shed is actually lovely!

Thanks.... That's really helpful. They've just opens a new showroom fairly close to me so I'll have a look. You're not the first person to comment on the odd showroom experience.

What's odd about it? I'm curious

I went to one of their sites yesterday to view their products and came away deflated, I also found it bizarre.

Hard to explain but the room was BIG with just 2 desks, 1 member of staff faffing around to find 'the best' coffee whilst taking our details whilst signing in guests at reception then showing us outside the products while I'm trying to deal with a toddler who doesn't understand the 'These playzones are not to be played on/with )'whilst also leaving the coffee in every outbuilding possible whilst tryjng to talk us through the options

In amongst these shinannigans popped in a few more potential customers also trying to dral with the one solitary member of staff.

Going on 1st impressions and the sheer disorganisation, bad management and obvious lack of staff, I won't return.

At the end she said she'd call us in 2 weeks time to make sure we'd measured correctly. It was (in my experience) a hard sell a la Venture Photographs.

A real shame as I really liked/wanted their office

That's interesting, once I factored in their assembly cost I decided they were just too expensive to risk being disappointed.

Another one here with the odd Dunster House experience around 5 yrs ago. Didn't end up buying anything (moved instead) but prior to finding a bigger property I was going to place an order with summerhouseessex.co.uk who we visited and they had the sort of thing we wanted at the time.

When we went, you had to register at a reception and we were shown to a room to wait for the salesman. He insisted on taking all our contact details before we could look at the displays, then led us to the "showroom" to show us potting sheds. We couldn't shake him off so we could talk privately about the displays.

We asked for a brochure so we could make notes. He said he couldn't leave us alone there to get it, but he would give us one on the way out. I said we would go in with him to get the brochure and then come out again, but that wasn't ok either!

We then tried to go inside their garden office displays, but he said we were only allowed to look at potting sheds as we hadn't said we wanted a garden office. However, we actually were looking for a garden office as well.

Although my DP was dead against getting the potting shed from them, I couldn't find another one that was to the exact design I wanted, so we went with Dunster, and DP built it himself. It's actually really nice. We have, however, got the garden office elsewhere.

Our summer house came from Dunster House. We bought straight from the website because the specs seemed so good and we were not disappointed.
It was easy to erect, very solid and sturdy, keeps a good temperature and although not soundproof it certainly dulls the sound of my sons music ventures.
Ours is 6 years old and still going strong, I would definitely buy from them again.

Which one did you have?

I can't see the exact one on there. But it is a classic shape with pitched roof similar to the avon . It has 2 doors with full length windows at the side of the doors, and a full length window on each of the sides of the cabin (if that makes sense) We also went for a thicker log and double glazed windows.
The only thing it didn't come with was felt, but for the price and quality it was still far better than any others we'd seen. But, this was 6 years ago?

Thanks, strangely I've just had an email from them mentioning bad reviews and offering a discount, but I think they've bumped up their installation charge!