Excellent was attended to by a female member of staff who was extremely helpful and due to her knowledge of all her products she was able to answer all of our questions.
Similar experience to others here, despite sitting down twice to go through exactly what items I needed, extra items added that were never asked for and a lot of key items missing which has now left me having to try and find compatible storage solutions elsewhere. I'm afraid to say this felt more like an underhanded attempt to squeeze as much out of me / increase commission than a simple case of user error when collating the items. My contractor has also had a similar experience with this branch in the past and all I could say is this branch is to be avoided at all costs. The quality of the items I received was fine apart from a whole worktop that was completely bent and this was a major hassle for the branch to take back. Howdens kitchens are fine, if you get what you actually wanted and the items not damaged, they do not represent value for money compared to others but essentially if you take anything away from this review, avoid the Leith showroom, I wish I did.
While the quality of the supplied materials and white goods seems to be good, I must note the very poor quality of customer service at this branch. The kitchen “designer” was way off in some of the measurements, requiring a large degree of improvisation on the part of the joiner. Plans weren’t supplied in time and simple emails took days to be answered. Other staff were outright rude when dealing with simple requests. Overall, I would not come back here for any future house improvement work.
I had my kitchen overhauled by Howdens. Before the job started, they delivered the wrong colours. The items had to be sent back, and this caused a delay. Tough luck if you had arranged leave from work. Be wary of Howdens. Question every detail. For instance, the cupboards are very thin. I used to keep dinner plates in my old cupboard. After replacement by Howdens, it could no longer hold standard dinner plates. I now have to store them in a lower-level cupboard, forcing me to have to stoop down. Also, the cupboards have 'no-slam' hinges. They are supposed to close the door quietly, but several of them don't work. You have to force the door closed yourself. They used my broom when they could have easily have brought their own. I still haven't gotten rid of the dust out of it, and whenever I use it on the floor, it puts down a new deposit of plaster dust. They also Ignored me: I said I would help them to move my fridge when the time came. Instead they did it themselves without telling me, and put dents and scrapes in the enamel, exposing the metal. The response when I pointed it out: "It wasnae me". The decking outside my house had bits of concrete and plaster ground into it by repetitive walking and turning on it, which not only did physical damage, but removed the protective layer, exposing the timber to the elements. The electrician also turned off the skirting board power points without telling me. It also turned out that he did not need to turn these off for the work he needed to do. He just needed to to turn off the kitchen appliance points. Advice to reader: make sure you're not using a computer/network router, or dread-to-think, a life support system. A good point is that some items I never thought of, such as an extractor were suggested by them. The extractor was supplied free of charge. However, I was also promised a splash-back, but this never appeared. Various fixes were promised to be undertaken on later visits. For example, a screw protrudes in to the inside of one of the cupboards, as it was not driven in at the correct angle. These were not fixed, and the visits never happened.
