Howdens - Alloa Avis 21

Richard came up with a fantastic plan for our Kitchen and lined up Ger as our installer. The quality of the Kitchen and Workmanship were excellent. Super happy with the outcome.

Last year my new worktop retains simple stains from making tea and coffee unavoidable cup ring and drips won't wipe away. I been complaining in alloa branch since the dismissed and no on interested I have a trade account with them.
Staff at at head office won't respond to emails or phone calls. It's a disgrace.

First class service very prompt at measuring kitchen quoting & supplying

Perfect from start to finish of my order, Richard is a credit to the branch

Had a great experience at Alloa - great service

Excellent service and help from all at Howdens Alloa great team great prices big thanks from KLM Joinery

Great bunch of lads ,very helpful, and curtious always get a chat ,Graham the manager is spot on 😉

The Alloa team have been very professional and helpful during any of my visits

One of my many neighbours helps to run a local charity for cats and needed bits and pieces for the kitchen within their new premises. She contacted me to ask if I could help out with the bits she needed to repair the kitchen they had been donated(it is a Howdens kitchen I'd picked up for them some weeks earlier from Edinburgh). I was only too happy to help out and the staff at Howdens Alloa couldn't have been more helpful to make sure she got what she needed,all said and done I cannot thank the staff at Howdens Alloa for their help in sorting out the bits she needed .

Very helpful,accommodating friendly staff.

Excellent service, amazing people, thank you guys for your hards work

The short review is. CHECK the order confirmation that this store gives your kitchen installer VERY CAREFULLY because Howdens will include items you haven’t ask for, unless you specifically tell them not to, and they won’t ask first!

Full review. I recently refurbished a rental property I own and, as part of the refurbishment, the kitchen units and worktops needed replacing. Everything else in the kitchen was fine; it just needed painting and new units and worktops. My installer suggested Howdens as he had an account there.

So my wife and I went into Howdens Alloa and chose the cabinets, door fronts, handles and worktop. Nothing else was mentioned. Unless you have an account Howdens won’t discuss prices but I confirmed that the items we had chosen were at the lower end of their range.

I have used the installer many times so I knew roughly how much he would charge for the of the refurbishment but when he gave me the price for the full refurbishment I was shocked at how high it was. It turned out that element from Howdens was around three times the price I had expected to pay, given the research I had done with other suppliers, who publish their prices.

So I asked the installer to break down the quote. It turned out that he had been charged for a sink, splash back for the hob (but not a hob), cooker hood, unit end covers and worktop upstands – none of which had been ordered, or even discussed. The installer and I agreed that he would return these items. This would reduce the cost by about a third. This still made the units/worktops very expensive in comparison to the competition but at least it was a significant reduction in the original quote.

But when he tried to return the cooker hood he was told that the kitchen had been “designed” around the hood and the current one may not fit. After discussing it with me we reluctantly agreed to replace the, perfectly good, hood with the one supplied.

I should have checked this before but when the job was finished I discovered that the old and new hoods were exactly the same width, and therefore the new units would have fitted fine around the existing hood. I felt that my installer and I had been seriously misled and contacted Howdens to complain.

After a somewhat heated conversation with the salesman it was agreed that a manager would ring me back. When the manager rang me he said that the unasked for items had been added to ensure that the price did not go up when any items that I had forgotten about, but actually needed, were included. When I pointed out that, if this was the case, why a hob had not been included, the manager had no answer. He refused to offer any compensation for the fact that I had to throw away a perfectly good cooker hood. He stated that it was up to my installer and I to go through the order and return any unordered items. In my opinion what Howdens are doing is to rely on inertia on the part of the installer and/or end customer to increase their sales.

The installer tells me that he has now cancelled his account with Howdens as he feels that this incident made him look bad in my eyes. It hasn’t, because he has done other jobs for me, but if this was my first job with him, I fear it would have.

I will be complaining to Howdens head office to see if this practice at Howdens Alloa is company policy and will update this review with their response, if I can.