Kendal 3 Drawer Wardrobe, Oak Effect

A friend contacted me last week, asking me if I could assemble some flat pack furniture. I agreed, assuming it'd take a couple of hours at most. The flat pack was a Tesco self assembly wardrobe - the Kendal 3 door (Centre Mirror) 4 Drawer Robe. I started at 10 a.m. By 1:45 p.m. I was just finishing what has probably been the most frustrating job I've done in years. I'm a joiner with 46 years experience - most of it on second fix work and a fair bit of built in furniture and kitchens - and I can honestly say this is the worst piece of home assembly furniture I've ever seen. Screws: cheap, poor quality, badly machined - and PHILLIPS! Nobody uses Phillips screws these days; pozidrive screws took over in the UK over 40 years ago! Couldn't use either my cordless or impact driver - the heads just rounded - even with a new (Phillips No2) bit. That meant all the screws had to be tightened up by hand. Carcase parts: supposedly numbered; in fact many of the numbers (stamped on the un-edged chipboard edge) had smudged, making them completely illegible. The only way to identify some parts was to check all the other parts and eliminate them, instead. The wardrobe sides were supposed to have been 'punched' in order to assist in placing the hinges and drawer runners. In fact the 'punching' tool - whatever it is at the factory - must be so worn as to be utterly useless. I literally had to use a magnifying glass to see some of them. The crowning piece of pathetic penny-pinching though, has to be the cams. These are normally - even in the cheapest flat packs - die cast alloy. Not with this they weren't!.... PLASTIC - and cheap plastic at that - probably polythene. Many of the parts that would normally be edged, in better quality furniture - such as the front edge of the shelf above the plinth - were just bare chipboard. Horrible, un-matching brown 'pozitops' (well they were similar to pozitops, but seeing as they were being tapped into Phillips screws, were about as useful as a cat flap in an elephant house,) hide the heads of the construction screws that went straight through the wardrobe sides (usually cam and dowel construction in decent quality stuff.) Even the construction screws weren't the usual flat headed type, found on other cheap flat packs; they were countersunk - ands since the holes weren't countersunk, no matter how much you tried to tighten them, the heads stuck proud, meaning the horrible little pozitops did likewise. Cheap hinges with no chipboard screws - just 1/2" 5s (how long they'll hold I can't even guess) to hold them to the doors and carcase... The drawer sides similarly had the pathetic plastic cams - some tightened up; some didn't. Finally stood the thing up to man-handle it into position and I could feel the front of it, moving out of square as it was being moved. Usually, with free standing wardrobes such as this, there is a stabilising bracket fixed to the top that fixes to the wall behind, to avoid it tipping up on someone - nothing too elaborate; just a right angled bracket of mild steel. No such luck: plastic again, on this thing. I can't help thinking... if I had this trouble - what on earth will a DIY'er go through, trying to make a reasonable job?