Today I went to film a video testimonial with Matt Lawless who actually requested to do a video testimonial after seeing other videos we have done in the past. He did have a story to tell, with regards to a bad experience with a very well known national kitchen supplier. In the interest of fair competition I asked Matt not to name and shame any company originally involved in his project but I decided to sit down with him and take notes and as the story unfolded it was quite alarming.
While speaking to Matt I learned the true extent of his misery including issues with the kitchen installation, but more specifically with the worktops. The worktops are supplied and installed by a 3rd party company on behalf of the kitchen company in question.
Matt told me about the laser template technician who arrived at his doorstep wearing a baseball cap, a full grey tracksuit and yellow trainers – not a company logo in sight and certainly not the sort of person you would expect to turn up from a prestigious granite company such as this, the question has got to be asked would you let this person in your house?
Anyway the laser template was completed and sent off and with the worktop colour chosen it was booked in for the install. On the installation day the two men that arrived were not wearing any sort of branded uniform and were not very helpful in answering any of Matt’s questions. In fact with the worktop going in there was a section with completely the wrong dimensions which had to be left out until it could be re-fabricated. This had an overall effect on the whole worktop as the joins couldn’t be guaranteed (more on this later) and the fitters were fed up so didn’t bother to secure the windowsill in place. The fitters still required their job sheets to be signed to say they had installed the worktop to a 100% satisfaction which of course they didn’t.
Matt then had great difficulty getting in-touch with somebody who would deal with the situation and get the missing piece of Quartz fabricated and arranged to be installed. They did inform Matt that there would be a possibility that it would not match the colour 100% too which set alarm bells ringing. They arranged to send the missing piece out to be fitted and the colour didn’t match, this happened a total of 3 times with Matt having to take an entire day off of work each time as they said somebody would be on-site between 7am and 11am but didn’t actually turn up until 5-6pm and on the final occasion 7:10pm.
The colour did not match and the Granite company offered to remove the worktops and give the money back but with no guarantee they could be removed without damaging the kitchen units or walls. There was no offer to replace the worktops and the lady who was dealing with Matt’s complaint simply laughed and said there was no way they would replace the worktops. Matt spoke to somebody at the kitchen company who also laughed and said they wouldn’t replace the worktops too.
J Rotherham Wren Kitchens
Rock and Co to the rescue
Matt in utter dispare got in touch with Rock & Co after finding us online, we gave him a great price and invited him down to see our range of Quartz, he chose the Grigio Medio Stella.
We booked in a laser template within a few days, Jake our laser templater arrived wearing his Rock & Co uniform (which is standard practice for all of our employees). Matt commented on the fact that Jake took at least twice as long to do the template and ensured nothing was missed. On installation day Jack was totally shocked at the state of the worktops that had been fitted, everything from the windowsill not being fixed, to the upstands being out of line, the missing section by the larder and something I mentioned earlier – the joins. The joins that had been done were badly colour matched and were almost 5mm wide which is unacceptable by any standard. The joins we have been able to perfect down to >1mm.
There was no damage to the kitchen units when removing the worktops as they had been fitted so poorly.
Our fitters left the new Quartz worktops perfectly fitted and Matt is very happy with the work we have done.
I invite you to watch the video below filmed today.
Write-up by Matt Woods