Utterly useless and terrible value (Moben Kitchens)

Member Name: Ron Stone, North Wales

Product:	Moben Kitchens
Date:	03/01/09 (668 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Many

First of all. Visit the Moben website and try to put a review on there....

You've guessed - only the reviews they want you to see are there.

A year on we are still suffering from the Moben kitchen we had installed. The quality of the components are very good, but do make sure you get kitchen fitters from Moben and not subcontractors who have been given twenty quid to do the entire job. Moben cannot wash their hands of the subcontractor issue. There were no quality checks from Moben and the only way we got Moben to take any interest was to complain vigorously. Then they sent a "surveyor" whose brief was evidently to give as little away as he could.

The disaster started after we had visited MFI in Shrewsbury and been very unimpressed with the laid-back and disinterested attitude of their sales staff. No wonder they have gone tits-up. My wife wanted some plant pots so we visited Do-It-All and I filled in some time wandering around their in-store Moben showroom. The sales person was very helpful and after only a little persuasion a rep visit was organised for that very day. I was impressed with that and also with the professionalism and attitude of the rep. The price was about the same as the MFI price so we signed up.

The problems began with removal of the old units. They had sent a stripling of a boy to take out the old kitchen, equipped with a screwdriver and a hammer. A day had been set aside for stripping out the old. The guy was very willing but the old kitchen had been well installed and wasnt coming out easy. The plywood units in particular were hell to get out, and eventually I had to help the guy all afternoon by using a car jack and some cunning ideas to break the old stuff out. I have to say that without my help he would still be doing it, and of course the customer should just sit back and watch things happening, and not get his hands dirty. We finished the job at about 8pm and both me and the Moben guy were knackered. Clearly Moben had not adequately resourced the job. Bad planning.

The installation staff then arrived. I did not like the attitude of the guy in charge, who seemed to look down on customers. He was obnoxious.
However, we were paid and committed. Through the installation process he tried to find reasons for extras to be paid for outside the Moben contract. I was having nothing of it, and the relationship soured rapidly. Here's a list of the idiocies they managed to perform

1. Units installed so that the American fridge-freezer was about 6" proud of the front of the units.

2. Exhaust outlet for the cooker hood was so positioned that it could not come out through a wall and eventually had to be re-planned through an adjacent roof. With better planning it could have been routed via the old outlet. The cooker itself was approx 1/2" lower than the surrounding work surface as the fitter hadnt bothered to raise it. An easy job I did myself later. Just a matter of screwing the legs upwards. Too much trouble for the Moben guy.

3. In order to fit the cooker hood shroud, they left coving 6" short of the shroud at both ends in order to get a screwdriver in. They considered the job "done" in that state. I lost it at that point and told the fitter that I had never seen anything that incompetent. His response was to say that Moben werent paying him enough. He said "stuff it" and left site not to return. I later had my own builder complete the job and had Moben pay for the work after a struggle.

5. When it came to connecting the gas to the cooker a cretin "fitter" turned up and spent an afternoon telling me where the gas bottle could not go. Constructive suggestions were not in his repertoire, and he went round with his little CORGI book telling us the gas bottle could not be here because of X and could not be there because of Y.. He must have finished training the day before as he did not have a clue. He could only tell you what could NOT be done. He eventually suggested that the gas bottle be installed at the front of this property with a 25m run of gas line at £40 per metre. Nice little earner. At this point I lost my rag and my wife had to take me away before I lumped the idiot. I am a mild-mannered and reasonable guy, but Moben had driven me to a point I didnt know existed. Eventually our own builder found a solution to the gas problem that didnt cost us anything extra.

6. We had committed and paid for another new kitchen in our granny flat in order to have both done at the same time. Moben had set aside a day to strip out the kitchen in the granny flat, but after my experience with the Moben stripper outer, I got my own builder to do it. A "day of work" planned for and charged for by Moben, was completed in 90 minutes.

7. I wasnt going to write a review, preferring to forget the entire Moben experience, but yesterday, a year after the kitchen was "fitted" the pull out kitchen unit nearly landed on my wife when the bottom securing plate came off the bottom of the casing allowing it to topple over. Fortunately I was there and able to stop it crashing out over the marble worktops. We had to completely unload it, in order for me to find what had gone wrong. The fitter cretins had used screws with heads just big enough to fill the fitting holes for the bottom bearer plate, but eventually the screws had pulled through. I have just spent an hour dismantling the unit and fitting screws with adequate-sized heads.

Conclusion.

Dont touch Moben with a barge-pole. We went for them because of their "reputation" but they are trading on a good reputation that has gone that-away long ago. The whole experience was frustrating and appalling. I wish we had used our own builders. I got them later to price the Moben job out of interest and it would have cost half the money.

We need a bathroom re-worked but not in ten million years will I be using Dolphin, which is part of the Moben group. I would be better off with Laurel and Hardy.

Summary: Got to be the most expensive and worst people one could use.