Truly awful - AVOID!

I do not know where to start!

We signed up with Wren initially impressed by the salesman and the kitchen, boy did we wish we hadn't been sucked in!

Having done some research we were nervous about going with Wren and made this clear to our consultant. He told us he would be with us every step of the way that we would get the best fitters and that he would be the main point of contact throughout....he then promptly left the company without telling us and to boot Wren didn't bother either we had to find out second hand from our fitters.

I then explained again to the manager that we were nervous and that we didn't want to be disgruntled customers, we'd given Wren every opportunity to smooth things over and make sure everything went to plan but as you'll see this was totally disregarded.

Delivery turns up without the plinths we had bought and paid for, they turned up eventually, 3 months later. It was like pulling teeth trying to find out what had happened to them or where they were, no one was willing to take any responsibility.

Having ripped out our kitchen, taken a week off work and laid a new floor in preparation for the fit to begin we then receive an invoice saying our fit is due to begin a month later than we had been told. This admin error meant Wren had to pull in a favour from a fitter who was doing two jobs at once - the net result, we had a fitter turning up at best from 3pm until 9pm - not what we had paid for plus it was incredibly inconvenient having someone banging and drilling at 830pm. We were without a kitchen for 6 weeks and into month 5 the kitchen still isn't finished.

The fitter proceeded to botch near enough every job he touched; ovens were put in loose, cupboards out by 4mm at one end, filler panels were botched together and stuck on with sticky tape, freezer doors fitted incorrectly, the extractor fan doesn't extract, work tops not level, one night i returned home, turned the tap on he'd recently fitted and it shot out of my hand spraying water all over the kitchen. (i haven't even touch on the scratched panels and chips on the draws)

After weeks of wrangling and 3 months in we requested from the area manager that the work be completed. This wouldn't be a problem we were assured and when i listed all the problems we'd faced and the way we had been treated we were told that this was 'an embarrassment' and it would be rectified that weekend. It wasn't. The fitter didn't finish the work, the fitter still turned up for half days and so the saga continued - believe me we pushed hard to get these things rectified but everything was like pulling teeth.

We had the area manager come out to our house to check on the work and she agreed that at best the fitter had half a days work to do but that she would book him in for a full day, from 9 until 5 to get the job done.

The day duly arrived and sure enough at 230 with a list of jobs still to do our fitter told us that he needed to pop out and get something. He didn't turn up again until 530pm - why he thought this acceptable knowing how frustrated we were with the whole process i don't know.

We had decided that enough was enough and my partner who was in the house with her mother at the time told him to pack up his stuff and leave. With that our fitter then decided that the best way to repay us for all that we had been through was to smash his work benches all over our drive, he stormed through the house slamming doors and chucking his tools into bag. I can't repeat what was said but needless to say he acted in an incredibly aggressive manner and it was left to my shook up partner to ask if 'we could remain professional'. We have two witnesses to this event, my partners mother and our electrician whose phone call my partner had inadvertently picked up.It was a truly unbelievable experience and one which no one deserves to go through let alone customers who had been let down time and time again by Wren. When i challenged the MD as to why we weren't being compensated for this incredibly unprofessional behaviour i was told that he hadn't broken anything of ours only his work benches- read into that what you will.

We are now into month 5 and our kitchen still isn't entirely complete - we're waiting on replacement doors and touch up paint - will it be done by Christmas who knows.

This might just sound like a rogue fitter but the incompetence was mirrored by Wren's 'customer service' - if you have any sort of problem this is where things really go wrong and where you truly get exasperated, you have to constantly chase, I've lost count of the amount of times I've asked for better communication to then not hear anything. There seems to be a complete disregard for the customer and we constantly felt in the service of Wren rather than the other way round. I sent emails to customer service, to the area manager to the MD and the directors office and it was only after some serious chasing that I would get a response. I even opened a twitter account just to get a response!

Seeking some closure on the whole 5 month debacle I then spent a couple of weekends pooling together my feedback and sent this across to the Directors Office in the form of a 10 page (yes 10 page!) letter detailing our horrendous experience.

Here Wrens customer service took a whole new level when having not filled out the correct form on a point of principle I received the following email saying:

Unfortunately no claim can be considered without both the completion of your order and also the return of a completed claims form. With this in mind, Wren Living will not be making an offer of compensation and your request will now be closed.

Having been through what we had been through, having waited 5 months to get a kitchen fitted, having dealt with a difficult fitter who kicked his work benches all over our drive way and acted in a truly aggressive manner, having taken time off work to deal with this shambles and been thoroughly stressed out by what should have been quite a pleasurable process this was how Wren thought we should be treated.

I then phoned the MD who agreed that a 10 page letter should have been enough to merit a better response than that and he assured me that he had his customers interests at heart.I have to severely question this sentiment following the subsequent conversation that I had with the MD which included a truly insulting compensation offer which amounted to 2% (£250) of the total cost that I had paid to Wren. Upon protestation this was then raised to 4% (£500) before being withdrawn in its entirety when I said that this was not acceptable. Wren have since washed their hands of this and have subsequently closed my case.

In short, don't touch this company with a barge pole!!!