Hello, some of you may remember my posting of last year about QuickQuid and how my identity was stolen:

Recorded telephone call with QuickQuid

Now I have a problem with a kitchen installation, and I'll be interested in hearing from other members who may have had to deal with similar issues.

My Kitchen Nightmare

I'm very grateful this website forum exists.

Best wishes,

Jon Danzig

www.JonDanzig.com

Jon,

I have sent you a private message.

Thanks for the interesting blogs Jon

Hi Jon,

Do you have any idea of what it may cost to rectify the faults.

The Furniture Ombudsman may be able to assist in you getting this resolved although they're limited to £5,000, excluding the purchase price of the kitchen.

The use of the your Chartered Surveyor will be useful if you need to take court action to get satisfaction. The CS can act as an Expert Witness in proceedings.

Did you pay the supplier for the installation cost as well, or was this paid separately to the installer.

Thank you very much for your reply with useful advice. I will check out the Furniture Ombudsman, although we don't yet know the cost of fixing the problems.

As I wrote in my blog, the kitchen was supplied by Custom Kitchens and Bedrooms Ltd, and their in-house designer, who has a separate business called Nigel Hirst t/a Bluestone Interiors, separately quoted to do the installation, along with some other related projects such as plastering, decorating, flooring and electrics.

I am unsure why Custom Kitchens and Bedrooms Ltd didn't quote for fitting, which I did request at the time, as they do advertise this service. It was my preference not to split supply and fit, and it would have made matters much more simple and straightforward. However, Nigel Hirst insisted on being contracted to do the fitting. Obviously the two businesses are connected in some way, as Nigel Hirst is the in-house designer for Custom Kitchens and he works from their premises. As far as I was concerned, I went to one shop for a kitchen.

My chartered surveyor has been attempting to negotiate with the parties to come to a resolution, but has not received satisfactory answers. I have lost trust after waiting so long for the projects to be finished, and after the quality of the installations has been so demonstrably poor.

Hi Jon

I think you are wasting your time with trying to get the supplier to fix the issue. The fact remains that the fitting company is at fault. That is borne out by their action of the installation. You would need to be careful of throwing around claims that the supplier is a fault. you may find yourself in a law dispute. Looking at the photos and being from a kitchen installation background there seems to be very little wrong. How can you explain why the washing machine door is hanging off. It looks like someone took out the screws. The sink looks to be fitted ok only it looks like it has not been sealed fully. Again where is the water coming from, are you overflowing the sink in order to get water into the rim.

As it is a wooden top, colour matching issue would of be spoken about in you order and a disclaimer put in. Most kitchen companies do this if not all.

There is the issue of oiling the top also and that may be the marks that you see under the sink. You can buy oil with stain in them, You would be responsible for oiling the top every 4 to 5 weeks. The oil maybe the reason for the different colours. try oil just the light side only and this may darken it up to match. Did you sign off the job when it was installed.

Alignment issue are normally a few second for a fitter to resolve.

You would be best to get a good kitchen fitter in for a few hours and sort these things out. He can sort out the tops with wax and match them up. It ought to cost you no more than £200. Then sent that bill to the fitter and ask him to pay for it to resolve the matter. I think your will find this will sort it and you can get on with your life.

Hello John Brown, you've made a number of assumptions. I have made very clear that the fitting company is responsible for the fitting, who happens to be the kitchen company's designer, and not the supplier of the kitchen. It's been admitted by the kitchen company that they supplied the wrong oak worktops; they don't match because they are different types of oak (one prime oak, the other rustic oak) and so they will never match however much they are are oiled. The wrong quality of oak worktops was also supplied; the kitchen company has now offered to replace the worktop with 27mm thick worktops and I am considering this offer. However, I am concerned that 27mm thick is not the best quality oak I had requested and 40mm thick would be better. The sink seal failed that's why water leaked. Nobody has taken screws out of the door, they have just worked loose. There are other issues wrong that I haven't detailed here; but you can see an indication of them in the photos, such as the sub-floor not being correctly installed.

However, it's probably best for me delete the blog and write a fuller report once all the issues have been resolved, so that I can share with readers what I am learnt from this exercise.

PS I tried to send you a private message John Brown but apparently it's not possible with your account.

PS I tried to send you a private message John Brown but apparently it's not possible with your account.

Hello there.

As neither of you has enough posts, this won't work I'm afraid.

HB

I suggest the blog is left as it is then when (IF) this does get resolved, as I think it will, we can assist in putting the final bits to the blog

Just bumping this thread to alert Caggers that there is now an update to this blog