Gibbs & Dandy - www.gibbsanddandy.com

Recently purchased a kitchen from Gibbs and Dandy Luton. My whole experience has been fraught with difficulties and mental and emotional stress.

It has been an stressful experience from the moment my order was places. The delivery came over two days; but correspondence was received only about one day. When the second delivery arrived no-one was at home to receive it and the member of staff from Gibbs and Dandy shouted at me on the phone saying, he told me it was coming. This is untrue. He was incredibly agitated and threatened to charge me a large sum for the re-delivery. I subsequently had to speak to someone at the Dulwich branch and the the penalty for the re-delivery was eventually waived.

I paid close to £4000 for the kitchen worktop. In the specifications I advised the member of staff that I would like drainer grooves. I paid the full price up front, which included the drainer grooves. However, when it was installed there were no drainer grooves. When I queried this I was advised that my builder told them that I did not want drainer grooves. The builder categorically denies this. Gibbs and Dandy advised that I would have to make an additional payment of over £1000 to get the grooves on the worktop, and they would refund a little over £100 plus VAT if I should decide to keep it as it is. I felt I was left with no choice but to accept the refund that they were offering, but then they said they would be unable to issue the refund to my credit card, despite having issued refunds for other items previously.

The kitchen cabinets came with the panel missing for the cutlery drawer. The individual who has been our primary contact at Gibbs and dandy throughout this experience was contacted by my fitter about this. A video was sent demonstrating that the part was missing. However no action has been taken and they deny receiving any correspondence about this which I know is incorrect as I have seen the message and the video that was sent.

My black range cooker has come with a random grey panel. The kitchen is black and white and the grey panel looks completely out of place. I have contacted Gibbs and Dandy about this and again they initially tried to blame it on the fitter, but agreed to investigate when I contested this.

The panels that Gibbs and Dandy have provided for the integrated fridge freezer allow for it to be fitted either in a way that would mean both fridge and freezer have to be opened each time either of them has to be used, or you have to open the fridge to gain access to the freezer. Neither of these options is ideal, and reduces the energy efficiency of the appliance as well as being technically and aesthetically problematic.

The plan for the kitchen did not allow for my existing washing machine to be integrated into the kitchen although this was what was agreed.

Overall, this has been an incredibly stressful experience. I wish I had gone with someone else.

We recently went to Gibbs and dandy. From the minute we walked into the yard in Gillingham Kent every single member of staff from the outside people to the office/ shop staff were so helpful and pleasant. We will definitely go there again and recommend it to whoever wants to hear.

Thanks for your help. Shows us what a great manager they must have.

Mr and Mrs Moss

went to dallow road this morning, DECORATING DEPT, had to wait as a gentleman was being served, didn't mind as prepared to wait my turn, but as i waited for some time the man serving behind the counter never looked at me, never said (be with you in a moment) but as he finished with the customer in front of me he then just walked off, a moment later another gentleman appeared behind the counter to serve me, i wanted some paint mixed, DULUX ,I had previously brought from homebase but they had run out of the base paint, well I have been painting for over 40 years and I'm an excellent decorator, but this horrible man behind the counter treated me like an idiot who did not know what I was talking about, said (no not the right paint ,you need to go to homebase or B&Q) and just started to walk away, I said (I can us your mix as its for an end wall and wouldn't show the difference in a very slight color change), so he finally went to mix the paint ,as I waited a black guy walked past and smiled and said are you being served, well that's all I wanted ,someone with some decent customer service, and most of all a decent attitude to a customer, I cannot help thinking if I were an attractive young lady ,or a man ,I would have been treated better, I will not be going back ever, I felt so deflated as I left,never wont to be treated like that again, wish I had taken names, but the first man was not very tall ,dark hair, with a sad face, the second was a tall moron,dark hair, who really did not want to be behind the counter,

Gibbs and Dandy Bedford what a fantastic service, I called paddy at the Bedford Branch over the past few days he has been more than helpful with great advice and patience, after many phonecalls paddy helped me to source and purchase the required materials for the project I am currently working on at home, ordered on the Thursday afternoon delivery sat morning at 9am great delivery guy professional quick and polite.

I can recommend using these guys ...positively outstanding !

Long story short, the manager of the Luton branch went out of his way to help me with a problem I had with an item I'd ordered that turned out to be unsuitable. One thing I would say and this goes for other places is check the re-stocking terms carefully.

They seem to have 3 price brackets at the Spalding branch Trade price Retail price and Mugs price I purchased 20 concrete edgings for the garden which cost me £2.27 each including VAT I decided to buy another 15 the week after my first purchase and asked my wife to buy them she was mugged by a different sales assistant who charged her £2.73 plus vat for the same item it appears that a certain employee behind the counter can charge what he likes to the people he regards as a Mug so if you need to use the Spalding branch avoid at all costs the guy with the sweet sounding Irish lilt cos he is going to charge you far more then the salesman standing next to him, in fact screw gibbsanddandy and buy from Jewson Spalding same company without a rip off salesman who overcharges women to bump up his commission

We found this company by looking on the Ideal Standard search facility which identified them as an Ideal Standard supplier. We visited the store in St Ives and were served by a helpful salesman. For about 3 weeks we were going back and forth amending our order and nothing was ever too much trouble for the salesman who remained patient and helpful at all times - I actually built quite a good repoir with him.

We arranged delivery and a week prior to this we went into the store to pick up the smaller items such as the taps etc to make the delivery smoother. Whilst we were there we asked the member of staff if the delivery men would be able to carry the bath upstairs for us, to which they replied they should but you may have to help them do it...which we thought nothing of at the time.

Anyway, one of the taps had a small dent on inspection which was replaced without any question by the salesman.

Delivery day arrives and the truck turns up with one man - it was at this point that we realised that we would actually rave to assist them with unloading the truck - this is where we made out first mistake - like an idiot I helped the man, but during the process of carrying the bath into the house a muscle in my upper back went into a serious spasm! We signed the goods as not being inspected and the delivery man left us so it!

I phoned the store to ask why they expect customers to help out with unloading the lorry and was passed through to the Branch Manager...this was where my good experience with Gibbs and Dandy ended - right from the off the manager was defensive trying to absolve his company from any liability - no apology was recieved until I pointed out that he didn't care and hadn't even got the basic customer service to say sorry. The argument persisted and got quite heated on both sides until I hung up the phone!

I was going to recommend Gibbs and Dandy to everyone that I knew and worked with and as I work for a large organisation with a recommendations page on our intranet this could have been very lucrative to them. However, thanks to the appauling way in which the Branch Mananger dealt with me I would not recommend the company to anyone. If you decided to do business with this company make sure from the outset that you make it plain that you will not be helping them unload the lorry - because they will absolve themselves from any responsibility should you injure yourself!

Be warned.