First of all I had just turned 22 and me and my boyfriend had only been living together for 2 years.
My boyfriend answerd a call from space kitchens one morning, usually we both hang up nuisence calls, but he carried on listening to her and asking questions about the promotions. She called back later to confirm a date for the salesperson to come round, I wanted to tell her to poke her kitchen and hang up but I didn't, she kept going on and on and I thought I would seem like a nasty person if I just hung up on her. Some how she managed to arrange the date and she seemed persistent that it should be later in the afternoon after we have had our dinner at about 6pm.
The day arrived for the salesperson to come round and show us the products with "no obligation to buy". He arrived on time, seemed like a nice man about our age, our dog didnt take kindly to him but he didnt seem to phased by him, he went straight to pat the angry mutt while I tried to calm him down. He even went as far as to give him his tie to play with.
So he asked us what we needed and gave us the big speach about how their kitchens are better than anyone elses because they don't have stores, this means they save money and bring those savings onto us. Also the quality of their kitchens is better too, german solid built quality (i got the impression he was saying good quality solid wood german kitchens for some reason). He handed us brochures and brought up door and drawer samples, while we were thinking about it all he talked about his life and how his parents owned a chain of hotels but are recently divorced and trying to work things out between eachother. He also said his mother had a hotel in development and they were going to be millionares once it was done. I think this is what made us think he was alright, because he must be doing this job not for the money but because he likes it, and we genuinely got the impression he was an extremely nice and cool lad with lots in common with us. Loves dogs which is a big bonus.
I am trying all the time to remain cynical and skeptical but you can't help but think this is a nice guy who wouldn't do nasty things to people. He also said he felt bad one time after taking £100 deposit from an old man.
After drawing up plans and telling us that in his line of work if he doesn't get us to sign the paper he doesn't get paid. He quoted us 14k for the kitchen. We both immediately sucked air, gasped and then laughed. "A bit too expensive?" he asked... damn straight a bit too expensive. He said since its coming up to christmas and all ..that he would call his manager and try to knock some money off for us.
He asked if he could use our phone since his had run out of credit. (which made me suspicious because you would have thought he would be on some sort of buisness contract, but I didn't really know for sure). But later on I found this is a common tactic they use to test if you are trusting them enough. Because we are nice people we let him use our phone.
Magically he managed to get the price down to 8k, wow that has to be some christmas deal to knock almost half of the price off with one silly call. By this time he has been in our house a good couple of hours. Just to get him out of our we said that sounded better and that we would think about it. He said it would increase the value of our property, that his mum had got the same kitchen and it bumped her house up an extra £20k and how he wouldn't let her buy anything else oh!..and that he would gladly pay 80k for our flat no problem! (with the new kitchen of course). We said it did seem to be a little bit too expensive for us but he jumped in talking about the payment plan and explained all that for.. I don't know how long. Somehow, I don't know how, probably from being tired and drained from hours of kitchen sales pitches we decided we would just get it (we planned to cancel the kitchen afterwards but this way the nice man gets paid so we don't feel bad). It took him another hour at least to do the paperwork (which he messed up and had to redo) meanwhile telling us, almost as if to seal the deal, that his best friend recently died in a car crash. I thought it odd that someone who's best friend just died would quite openly announce it to complete strangers, because if it had been my best friend I wouldn't have even been able to think about her without breaking down. He seemed fine with it, we sympathised with him and his streak of bad luck.
I mean.. you can't really make the man go through all the hours of pitches and paperwork after all hes been through and just turn him away and say sorry we don't want a kitchen can you?! No it seemed we couldn't. We signed it and gave him £100 deposit. What a clever man he was. Well it was 6pm when he arrived and about 11pm when he left. We were shattered. I rang my dad and told him the "good news" and he told me we were complete idiots and should have told him to **** off. Oh how right he was. After reading reviews on here I was shocked.
During the next week we tried bargaining with the manager saying we just can't afford the kitchen and that really our floor needed to be replaced first (water damage) and he happily set a date to come round to do the paperwork to cancel the contract for us. When we opened the door to him his body language was immediately intimidating and agressive and he basically said our kitchen was already being made for us (BS because its all flat packed and imported) and that we can't cancel anything. I know for a fact their surveyor has to come round and see if a kitchen is able to be put into a house first, and that THEY had a right to cancel if was too risky for them (I don't think they really would have cared) but the surveyor hadn't been round to see us yet, so why a company would start custom making a kitchen for a house they havn't surveyed yet is beyond me!) But I can tell you I have never met someone so unpleasent in my life. After I almost had a breakdown he got out some forms wrote up some more paperwork for a cheaper kitchen after demanding we appreciate he wasn't "an ogre". He said this was better for us and said he would give us £200 to do the kitchen floor.
Defeated I broke down after he left. Unfortunately for him he made a big mistake because when you sign a contract (the new one he made for us) away from the store (ie in our house) he has to BY LAW tell us our right to cancel, how to cancel, and leave us a copy with the contract we just signed. Failure to do so can result in a £2,000 fine. He failed to do any of this. Unfortunately for us we didn't go down that line but merely threatened him with this information we found. Needles to say he wasn't very happy. We managed to cancel the contract to the financing (the main worry) quite easily which resulted into the whole contract being cancelled. His last words were that we wasted a huge amount of his time and thus cost his company money.
You know what... i'm glad I wasted some of his precious time because he, along with the salesman, completely destroyed my faith in humanity. I am still disturbed by my experience with them, and I do not wish this on anyone, especially the vulnerable people they prey on. Companies like this should be made ILLEGAL, it is disgraceful in this day and age. I havn't been able to fully trust ANYTHING anyone says to me anymore. Which might not seem like a bad thing to some people but I am saddened by it.
MY advice is to stay WELL clear of anyone who approaches YOU to sell you something. If you want it YOU go look for it.
B&Q designer that we got out of curiosity was was fast, professional, quoted us £2,000, and was in and out of our house within 15 minutes. This is how it is supposed to be. When we told him how different he was from Space kitchens he laughed and said it was because he is "a professional designer, not a salesman." He asked us if Space Kitchens had asked us to use our phone and told us stories of how his family members had died. Common tactics it seems. Do not trust Space Kitchens under any circumstances.
We still havn't got our £100 deposit back.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
You also have, by law, a 30 day cooling off period in which you can cancel the contract. I had a very similar problem with another kitchen company who afterwards would ring us up usually at mealtimes asking us to have their kitchen/windows/fitted bedrooms on a daily basis. I had to change my phone number and go x directory in the end. Very good 1st review and welcome to ciao x
anonymili 15.07.2008 15:08
I never trust any of these people, like you say, if you need something go look for it yourself :) Welcome to Ciao, enjoy your stay :)
bandcamp 15.07.2008 11:57
very helpful in terms of warning people off I think. I don't think since first joining ciao I've heard one positive thing about them. They seem to have a permanent place on Watchdog too.
Jul 15th, 2008
very helpful by (100%):
