You Get What You Pay For! (Habitat)

Member Name: pjs21

Product:	Habitat
Date:	19/09/02 (1693 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality, Reasonable prices

Disadvantages: Some items are Tat, Some items are overpriced

I have never really had any dealings with Habitat, no major purchases anyway. It's always been the place I get my tea towels but that's pretty much it.

I wouldn't touch their kitchenware section – always a believer in buying quality pots and pans from a recognised manufacturer as opposed to a company who makes them to fill a section in the shop.

For about four months now we've been looking for a dining table. Now, you may think that should be easy, I certainly did when the venture started out, but let me tell you otherwise.

I had no idea quite how many dining tables there were out there, how much they all cost, let alone the cost of the chairs to go with, and to be honest if I liked one then my lovely other half didn't and vice versa.

It was quite by chance that I popped into Habitat to look at shelving when a table caught my eye. Excited I phoned my girlfriend to tell her to go Habitat and take a look. She'd already been that same morning, she didn’t like the shelves I had found, but she too had seen a dining table that she really liked.

And guess what?

Yes, it was the same table. Hooray. We had finally found a table we both liked.

Several times we walked through Habitats around London looking at our table. There it was, solid oak and large enough to seat ten people for dinner.

We sorted the flat out and went back two weeks ago to pay for and order the table.

It took a few minutes to put the order through, the lady who dealt with us had some of the best customer service skills I have ever come across in a high street shop.

She was relaxed, charming, funny, friendly and above all – highly efficient.

We were given a choice of delivery dates, and went for a weekend at the same cost as a weekday delivery as it was the only day we could do for several weeks and they were keen to make the sale.

It took precisely s
ix days for the table to arrive. We ordered on a Sunday and received it the following Saturday, having rejected both a Wednesday and Thursday delivery. A five day turn-a-round from any shop is impressive, but we could have had it within three working days. That’s pretty damn good.

We also ordered benches and not chairs to go with table, this made it cheaper and also saved a lot of space as the benches are designed to go perfectly and neatly under the table. We have a big room for it, but not that big! Along with these we also ordered two bookcases. We were advised that they now came in an oak finish so would match the table. As we hadn't seen this in the catalogue or in the shop we were pleased to have this pointed out to us. Again, good product knowledge from the member of staff.

We were contacted on the Thursday by Habitat to confirm the delivery and make sure that there were no problems, or anything that may prevent the delivery from happening, i.e No parking for the van, No access to the flat from the road etc.

Were contacted again on the day of delivery by the driver of the van giving us a two hour window for delivery.

Obviously they were later than they said but only by five or ten minutes, and the traffic was really bad on our road, so they did quite well.

The furniture was brought in for us and we were given the forms to sign "Unchecked" so that we could report any damage when we inspected them later.

All of the furniture arrived flat-packed and very well protected. The dining table took us about ten minutes to put together – it's a bit of a brute and very, very heavy. The benches took about the same, and the bookshelves took me about twenty-five to thirty minutes per case. So within two hours were now fully furnished.

The quality of the furniture is outstanding, especially the dining table and benches. They are solid oak, not veneered, and have the most
beautiful grain.

The bookcases are real oak veneer over chip board. They are thick and sturdy and will easily hold up to the weight of my cookbooks, unlike the cheaper Argos bookcase I had previously purchased for this job which is now a heap in the basement after two shelves snapped.

I had always thought Habitat to over-priced, and they are on many of their items. However, I do not feel that the price we paid for the goods we received one week after ordering was too much for them.

The table was £649.00, the benches £185.00 each, and the bookcases, I think, were about £180.00.

It was a big spend for us, and a big decision, but Habitat have come up trumps and I cannot fault the service or the goods we received.

I walked out of two shops beforehand when trying to buy bookcases because of bad customer service. One shop asked me to join another queue after I had been queuing already for ten minutes and they wanted to close the customer service desk, and at another I was completely ignored whilst the two girls behind the counter chatted about their Saturday nights. The cases from Habitat were more than we wanted to pay, but we were won over buy the knowledge and friendliness of the staff member.

So, for all it’s faults, and I’m sure it has many, Habitat came up trumps this time and proved to be one of the better High Street furniture shops.

I will not hesitate in going back there again. It does seem that you do get what you pay for after all.

The branch we purchased from was Habitat, Kingston Upon Thames.

They website www.habitat.co.uk is very good for pictures of their furniture, but you can't get a real feel for the stuff until you see it. They're very good at making some of their more "unusual" designs look very good on the internet, when you see them however, it's sometimes a bit of a shock.

They do have a catalogue which costs £2.00, or
free if you spend over £10.00 in the shop.

I know a lot of people don't like habitat and think it's overpriced, but when you've spent finve months looking at dining table costing from £89.00 to £9,000 - yes that's right, you see that some of their stuff is actually really good quality at a very reasonable price. And to be honest, it's not like we buy a dining table every two months - I expect atleast 10 years out of this one, but hopefully a lot more.

Summary: