Pls help us choose a builder

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We are planning a kitchen diner refurb involving some structural work and fitting a steel. We got quotes from different builders and have now narrowed it down to two but cannot decide which one to go for! Hoping to get some wisdom on here with choosing.

Builder A
Local family building company. Comes highly recommended on the local Facebook group. Have been quite pushy in getting the job. Seem to work with high quality people.
Sticking point is the quote. It is quite high and means we would go over budget by thousands!

I am wondering if we can push them down in price a bit and go for a plumber who we used in previous renovations and who charges nowhere near as much as the plumber working with builder A.
Also, parts of the quote are in units, eg £100 per kitchen cupboard, £65 per electric point, flooring in m2 etc. Add VAT to that and it feels like the costs can add up quite significantly.

Builder B
Also a local company, who seem to do both residential and commercial work. Part of the appeal of builder B is that they gave me an overall quote for the entire job, including plumbing, flooring, kitchen fitting etc. No unit pricing like builder A, so it's pretty clear how much we will end up paying to get a finished kitchen. With their quote we would push the budget as well but builder A pushes vastly above it.

The issue we have with builder B is that I can barely find recommendations for them online. On local Facebook groups all recommendations are from people somehow affiliated to the company, same for google reviews.
However, builder B was recommended to us by a local kitchen company who have worked with them on several jobs and who said they were decent. We want to get the kitchen from this company so we feel it might be a good thing to use builder B if they have fitted several of their kitchens.
DH looked up the company accounts of builder B and said they were healthy.

I just feel we should go with builder B, as we would have to renegotiate with builder A, and also arrange for our own plumber rather than using theirs. But then I get this niggling feeling why B don't have more people recommending them on Facebook or elsewhere online.

Sorry about the long post, anybody have any wisdom to share? Is anyone aware of other pages online where I could possibly find reviews?

Thank you

Ask the builders for phone numbers of 2 or 3 recent clients who are happy to speak about their experience. If they are good builders they should have recent clients who are happy to chat to you and recommend them.

Ask the previous clients things like did they stick to budget (for stuff that was in the contract), did they stick to time, what happened when something went wrong (stuff always goes wrong!) if there were extras did they feel the builder priced them fairly. Did any errors emerge afterwards that had to be fixed. Were they nice to have around, clean and organised, turned up reliably. Did neighbours complain about them. Etc.

Reviews only from affiliated people is a big red flag to me.

PS you absolutely must speak to previous customers!!

Thanks Minipie, that's my gut feeling exactly! Though builder B did offer a phone call from a recent customer, so I might take him up on that.

I will see if builder A can match B'a quote..