Cost of a kitchen fitter

[NeedAHoliday2021]

Would anyone be able to share what they paid for a kitchen fitter?

My parents had a quote from their builder but they’ve just learned he’s pocketed the £2000 Howdens discount himself and over charged on other bits. I’m wondering how unreasonable the quote was. This is a fairly average kitchen size with no island.

It entirely depends on the kitchen. My last kitchen cost about £1600 to fit including tiling the backsplash. My current kitchen cost about £2,500 not including the worktop fitting.

Thanks @cloudtree

I was quoted £1500, £2500 &£5000 for fitting a small kitchen. (Haven't had it done yet).

Some tradesmen will pass on their Howdens savings to customers and some don't. It's THEIR discount, so it's up to them really.

Good luck to your parents!

Their fitting quote was £8000 - Howdens staff were shocked and offered names of alternative fitters. That didn’t include electrics, plumbing or tiling/decorating.

@SpookyPumpkinPants and that’s fine so long as you don’t lie in the hope they won’t look at the Howdens receipt.

We paid £3000 for fitting a reasonably large DIY Kitchens job with an island, including the utility room.

Unless there is a significant amount of additional building work included in that figure, 8k is a huge ripoff.

For balance we are paying £6.5k for fitting of a large main kitchen and a separate medium sized wet scullery. The quote is from a high-end local kitchen showroom and includes completely replacing the kitchen ceiling, replastering the scullery ceiling and most of the walls plus tiling in the scullery (we aren't having any tiling in main kitchen).

We're paying £4K for fitting a large kitchen and utility. But that doesn't include the trades like plumber, electrician, tiler, gas engineer

£8000 you should have said it was Buckingham Palace!

Lying about passing on the discount is quite different to just not passing it on. It looks like they have damaged their reputation/business significantly over this one job. Idiots.

Have you left as many bad devises as possible?

Damn phone reviews not devices!

Well, parents asked for the actual breakdown which has the fitting charge (plus vat) so they queried it. He’s hugely insulted they’ve questioned it and has stropped off, refusing to do any more work (as this was part of a bigger building project). This is probably a good thing in the long term but does delay things.

How would your parents know the discount offered by Howdens to their customers?
A£2000 discount is huge the kitchen must be enormous..
It’s very difficult to judge how reasonable a quote is when you don’t know what is involved. I seriously doubt Howdens would comment on quotes from their customers that would be very unprofessional.

@Berylbee the builder told my parents to pay Howdens directly so Howdens gave them the receipt that had the breakdown. It’s a 3 bed semi with a standard 3 wall u shape kitchen.

So if your parents paid Howdens directly, the builder passed on his discount

he didn’t ‘pocket’ the discount, your parents paid Howdens and the fitter allowed them to use his discount.

Agree - if your parents paid the Howden's bill then they have had the builders discount applied to the bill.

How are you thinking the discount works??

Also what do you mean that this is part of a bigger building project. If there are building components included in the kitchen element that may account for the £8k price tag.

It all sounds very acrimonious, couldn't your parents have had a chat with him over a cup and asked their questions nicely?

He’d added the £2000 to his bill for them to pay him back the discount.

The building element has been completed and paid for for the downstairs. There is a separate electrician, plumber, plasterer and decorator.

How is he pocketing the £2000 himself when he told them to pay Howdens directly? Most builders add a charge onto the trade prices they receive and so sounds like he was being reasonable passing the trade price on and not hiding anything. Surely your parents got more than one quote? The whole point of a quote is to give you the chance to accept it or not - he hasn’t forced you to accept it surely? Sounds like he answered your queries on it and gave the information you asked for leaving you to make a decision. A dishonest builder wouldn’t have done that. If you are accusing him of profiting on something when he clearly hasn’t and he hasn’t even done the job yet - then no wonder he stropped off.

I think communication has been poor but my parents have done 2 previous house renovations and never had anything like this. It’s the first one for about 15 years and a new area so they didn’t know anyone. They’ve had 2 new quotes today for £3,500 including vat and £3k so will pick one of those.

@Grit234 read above. They’ve been asking for the breakdown as he was doing the building work then offered that he would be able to do the kitchen too. Over 3 months they’ve been asking for the breakdown quote and now it’s nearly time to fit he’s finally given it to them and it’s a lot more than they expected. I think he thought they’d pay for convenience.

So if they have done this before why accept a quote they consider too high. Then use the builders discount themselves by paying direct to their supplier. Then Complain about the price. Sounds like the first builder dodged a bullet there, good luck to the new fitter.

More difficult in a new area to find recommendations if you don’t know people - but checking how long the firm has been in business is probably a good indicator. If they are a long standing local firm then unlikely they are trying anything on. It could be that they covered every eventuality in their quote - I think we’ve all fallen for the trap of going for the cheapest quote and then being hit with a load of extras. At least your parents will now ask for a full breakdown of work for new quotes. I’d imagine most builders would be upset if they heard their suppliers had been criticising them and handing out other numbers. Shame as sounds like they were happy with the work he was doing if they were asking him to do more - but at least they’re sorted now and it isn’t a small village with only 1 builder in town!

@Berylbee he’s been doing other quoted for building work and has been promising a kitchen fitting quote that he offered to do. They’ve been asking for the quote for the last 3 months while the other work was being done. Those prices had been fine so they weren’t expecting the fitting quote to be anything other than reasonable. He was due to do that in December. He finally gave them the full kitchen quote and it was high so they asked what the breakdown was, which they got this week. They never agreed to it and he knew they were waiting for the quote but he assumed they’d go with it as he was in the house doing there other work. As £8k looks like it was over normal fitters charges I think they’ve dodged the bullet.

Sounds like miscommunication to me. You’re assuming he was assuming they’d accept it - if he’s not a kitchen fitter but a general builder he may be more expensive for something more specialist or he’s added in everything that needs doing or he quoted high as he didn’t want the job. Unlikely if he’s been honest with everything else and passed the howden’s bill to pay directly that he’s trying it on