Advice
HONESTY AND TAKING CARE OF PRODUCTS PAYS ...
Richard Renouf, Furniture & Floorcoverings Consultant
Her impression of the installer had been undone by his bluff, and now he’ll have the added cost of an expert’s report to reimburse in addition to putting things right."
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If the number of phone calls I received were anything to go by, Mrs B was clearly worried about her new kitchen and she seemed even more anxious about complaining. We’d talked about the problems several times, namely, dents and chips in her gloss white doors and drawer fronts that showed the poor quality of the units she had bought.
The installer had been extremely helpful. He’d given her the supplier’s contact details so she could report the faults to them, but they’d repeatedly denied it was their problem and because they hadn’t even come to look at what she was complaining about, Mrs B understandably felt they were offhand and didn’t care. Mrs B had asked me to undertake an independent inspection and so I duly obliged. Whilst standing in her kitchen listening to her story and looking at the units, I couldn’t help but notice that the dummy drawer front under the sink had clearly fallen off several times and the corners were badly damaged, showing the MDF beneath. There were chips on the top edges of the drawers, especially the cutlery drawer. Worse, there are bubbles along two of bottom edges of the doors of the wall units near the hob. It doesn’t look good, so Mrs B goes for a coffee on her balcony with her friend who’s there for moral support while I take a closer look. I take no chances when inspecting and accordingly, I have a macro lens for my camera which allows me to take photographs really close up, as close as 12mm away, and then I can blow them
up even larger on my camera screen or computer. I photograph the two bubbles and as the camera focuses the screen shows the simple truth: these are not bubbles in or under the lacquer, they are bulges where the bottom edge of the door has been knocked. Under high magnification the cracking of the lacquer and the crushing of the edge of the door is easy to see. I joined Mrs B on her balcony and I showed her and her friend the pictures on my camera, the conversation went as follows: “I know exactly what the problem is, and it’s not a manufacturing fault, it’s damaged, and it looks as if your fitter dropped the two doors on the edge of the worktop below.” Mrs B, “But he was such a nice man, and so helpful getting the details of the company for me.” Me: “Perhaps he really thought this was a fault.”
