I forgot I made this thread. Wow. It's huge. Going to spent some time reading it and then add some content myself. Since I made this thread I've done too much to list including a house move. Pretty poor on my part as didn't take many photos.
Anyone had any experience with Howdens? I hear conflicting info as to whether they will only deal with the trade or not. I want to get a kitchen cabinet door, an end panel, some edge stripping and some worktop to match what our kitchen already has when we moved in. Do I need to find someone with a trade account? I hear the prices for trade literally go down by more than half of their "normal" advertised brochure prices often.
They'll only deal with trade but will likely have a builder or someone they can suggest who will let you use their account for a few %. Otherwise it's easy to get an account, something like a letterhead or business card will do normally and they are super easy to knock up online.
Generally speaking they don't publish RRP prices to the public and even a first time builder would get between 40% and 60% off the RRP that they list on their system. My builder who uses them a bit but not massively (maybe 3-5 kitchens a year) had around 70% off most things. Once all the 'discounts' are taken into account I found they priced up very similarly to DIYKitchens so if you look at them online you can roughly work prices. You can negotiate and they'll add a better discount - we had our quote with around 70% and made noises about elsewhere and DIYKitchens and they took another few % off to get it down. I've heard of some accounts getting 80-90% off. It's all a bit smoke a mirrors but if you know a builder or chippy that you get on with ask to use their account, if not make up some details and get an account and as a last resort ask the branch for the details of a builder and explain to the guy what you want to do and you'll cut him a few % for the use of the account.
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