The great, big, orange, kitchen fiasco

No!  Not the colour of my new kitchen – the colour of the B&Q logo who are totally incompetent when it comes to home delivery and product knowledge. 

I'm not that brave!!

I ordered my new kitchen online at the end of January for delivery last Thursday.  Project Manager took the day off work to receive the kitchen.  On arrival at the house, the delivery driver informed Project Manager that some pieces were out of stock.  This is annoying because:

1.       It’s the housing for our built in oven and the housing for a larder cupboard without which we can’t permanently install the kitchen units

2.       It’s plain bad service to wait until delivery to tell you

3.       They knew my order 4 weeks ago

When I phoned to complain I was told it was because the order only gets picked the day before delivery (why do they need 4 weeks to process my order then??).  On my second phone call, to see if they could shift things along a bit quicker, I discussed compensation for lost time on our build.  The panels should now be getting delivered this Thursday coming – I will wait and see.

The drama continues...

I dispatched project manager to our local B&Q to pick up all the hinge packs and drawer packs (as advised by B&Q call centre this was a store item, not a home delivery item).  Project Manager arrived home in due course with steam coming out of his ears as the store manager had had to order the items for home delivery as they are not stock items!  We did negotiate a reduction in price for this error but we now have to wait until mid-April for all the pieces.  Our kitchen is going to be naked without doors for some time.  This is assuming that the deliveries occur as promised.  In the meantime I will not allow myself to Google ‘B&Q poor home delivery’.

Needless to say, the big orange store is now deleted from my suppliers list – Wickes and Screwfix have excellent home delivery systems and tend to be cheaper anyway.

Rant over.  For now.

Otherwise we have had a really productive weekend where I have gained many new skills.  I have tried my hand at bricklaying (not great but therapeutic), plastering (impressed with our effort but won’t be inviting my plasterer friend to inspect!), installing a plastic plumbing system (really easy but no water test done as yet), oh, and demolition! 

Now I see what Brother-in-laws-girlfriend was so excited about!  Even girls are effective at demolition when they have the right Big Sledgehammer in their hands...http://inthisboxofgoodies.blogspot.com/2011/02/hand-me-hammer.html