Howdens V DIY kitchens

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Both quotes almost identical, which would you go for?

DIY Kitchens every day of the week. Superior in terms of quality and design.

Howdens are shit!!

Oh wow! I thought everyone would say go to Howdens, my builder is currently putting a Howdens kitchen in his house so I expected more positive reviews

Howdens. Have just done my house kitchen and cafe kitchen using them. The fact that it all comes pre asembled was great and delivery was great. Kitchen also looks great. My carpenter is fitting one in his kitchen too.
Friends had theirs from Homebase, the kitchens took months for all the right bits to arrive and were just rather shocking!

Your builder will want Howdens because they get incentives for purchasing.

I didn't know they came preassembled. Do the fitted bathroom cabinets come preassembled too?

The builders themselves have been very indifferent as to where I purchase, just offered to get a design with Howdens arranged. Hmmm....tough decisions

DIY kitchens every time (the units all come pre-assembled too). Howdens pricing is too opaque for my liking!

No experience of DIY kitchens but really pleased with our Howdens one.

The price does depend on how much your builder is making on it tho. We were fortunate that a friend with a trade acct ordered it for us so we paid cost price.

Yeah I've just got the Howdens pricing direct

I'm going to go in store tomorrow to have a look

Shame DIY showroom is about 6 hours south of here

Another vote for DIY! We had ours fitted last year and our fitters (who usually fit Howdens and were actually trying to persuade me to use them initially), were amazed at the quality of the DIY units compared with Howdens.

Don't know about DIY but Howdens units are good. Wouldn't touch their appliances with a barge pole though - same as Beko/Diplomat etc

Our diy kitchen order just arrived last week and the quality is excellent on the whole. However after sales service seems to be done by 10 year olds! We have a problem with one bin unit not sliding smoothly and the reply with terrible English told me "the frame" would be too tight so I should loosen "the screw" a few millimetres. Took me a while to think of a good reply.
Not sure whether other companies have better service but at least howdens you can go in and complain directly.
The delivery people for diy kitchen also dented our literally brand new timber sliding door when they delivered things which I was really annoyed about. But I didn't notice until they left and I was counting the packages and of course they didn't bother to mention.

DIY kitchens - masses bigger choice of units finishes etc. Their "standard" option is Howdens "upgrade" - full extension drawers etc. Howdens are fine as far as they go and solid enough, but a very restricted range. If you are pricing up a Howdens design you might find you have options to improve it. Builders get a huge discount on Howdens and they like what they are familiar with - but it's your kitchen you have to live with it for 10 years.

useful comparison

I'll be fitting it myself so ease of fitting does make an impact too

We've just fitted a howdens kitchen and i love it. They have also just massively extended their range so have a lot more options. We used a family members account and haggled the price a bit so it fit our budget.

I've designed for a lot of people buying from DIY - and they all seem to be delighted with the product and service.
I've designed, at most, a handful of Howdens ones over the years ... not heard negatives about the product -but people came to me for their own design, because they wanted more design input that they felt they didn't get or felt they couldn't ask for, from the Howden's staff, as it's a trade outlet.

Our fitter tried to persuade us to go with Howdens, but we ordered from DIY. The units all came pre-assembled and the fitter said that the quality was actually superior to Howdens. We've been really pleased with everything about the kitchen and the customer service was brilliant.