Wickes - Winchester Reviews 12

Had our first appointment with Helen which has been really positive. Helen was just easy to talk to and opened up many options but also balanced with the realities of possible challenges with our own ideas of design and materials. We’re looking forward to the next stage of seeing design ideas based on our initial discussion and hopefully progressing to the next stage of the project.

Carla and Dan at this store were fabulous last week. Long story short, I had struggled to find the tap that I needed to replace due to a fault. Not only were they able to make the whole process simple from start to finish, they were kind enough to keep the item for me until I could travel to Winchester, not my local store, to collect it. Friendly, very polite and a credit to the Wickes brand! Thank you

Our Bathroom was recently completed with Helen as our designer. It was quite a big project, with ambitious design. Helen was great at making suggestions for products within our budget. Even better was being assigned AJ to install and complete the work. He was patient, his work neat and to a high spec. He also went above and beyond to find other installers for key areas of the project to have a new boiler moved and put into the loft, all of which would not have happened if he hadn't sourced reliable trade for the job. My only feedback would be that deliveries got confusing, it was hard to keep track of what was being delivered and when. Although multiple messages were sent updating of deliveries and when, but these came on several days and from several different places. If we didn't have AJ to keep track of everything this part would have been hard, as several things arrived outside of our assigned delivery date. That said, we love our new space and highly recommend Wickes!

Just bought a new bathroom from Wicks Winchester. I have to say the service has been fantastic. Thank you to the designer Helen, and a special thank you to Karla who went above and beyond to help organise things. It really makes a difference and I would definitely recommend.

We visited my local WICKES store in Winchester and had an excellent experience thanks to a member of staff named Sanette. She was extremely helpful and took the time to guide me through the options, helping me choose the right product with confidence. Her knowledge made the whole process much easier. Sanette was friendly, kind, and very courteous throughout. It was a pleasure to receive such thoughtful and professional customer service.

Adriana was incredible to work with on our new kitchen design. She was incredibly helpful, problem solution focused, and patient throughout the entire process, really listening to our ideas and turning them into a beautiful, practical reality. We couldn’t be happier with the result.

Mark was amazing when I was in store this morning when I had lots of decisions to make. And nothing was too much trouble, highly recommend him.

We recently used Wickes to help design our new bathroom. Our Design Consultant Adriana was very helpful, patient and had some wonderful ideas. We are now excitedly waiting for our new bathroom to be installed.

Fantastic service. I went into store recently & asked for some top soil & a long weight. They had the top soil but they couldn’t help with my 25kg long weight. Luckily the gentleman at the till was very proactive & helped me lift my 74 bags of top soil into my car. I have considered buying a kitchen from wickes but currently don’t have the funds & am trying to work out where to store my top soil.

The elderly gentleman on the till was rather helpful

Had a bathroom installed in February by their recommended installer. It is now almost September and we have had the shower leak and damage the flooring and carpet in the adjoining bedroom, cabinet has not worked since installed, fixtures installed so they are not straight, grout falling out in corners and the problems keep on appearing. I wrote a full report about it the issues to them in mid-July and the installer (Celpol Constructions) has unprofessionally refused to communicate with us, because they believe they finished the work properly. Wickes on average take between 2 - 4 weeks to respond to emails and typically take 2 follow-ups before they respond. I am so frustrated and irritated by the treatment. I wish we had never worked with them and I would recommend anyone to stay away from them.

So... we bought a new kitchen at Wickes, Winchester, and used one of their own installers to have the kitchen installed.

From what I gather from other people's experience it’s a draw of luck whether you end up with a good kitchen installer or not. Ours (Ben Yaldren) was amazing all the way. He is very quick and has a lot of experience, not only in installing kitchens but also in dealing with Wickes' shortcomings.

He ended up fixing the errors of our designer. Just to be clear, this was NOT the designer's fault! Our kitchen designer was a lovely lady and very patient, considering that we were probably nightmare clients because we didn't know what we actually wanted. She has done her very best but she was new to the job and still learning the ropes, which is probably not a great mix with customers who are as vague as we were.

So. There’s nothing wrong with being new. People learn, people make mistakes and learn some more. Errors are to be expected. That’s cool! Again, nothing wrong with that and I'd hate for this to backfire on her! What’s a little bewildering is that Wickes doesn’t seem to have any safeguards in place to pick up errors, though, but relies on the installers to sort things out.

Luckily, we had Ben to do exactly that: help and sort things out for us!

He was also able to help when the customer service team stuffed up and ‘forgot’ to book the delivery for the kitchen. They also ‘forgot’ to inform us – so we only found out when the agreed delivery date came and went - and no kitchen was delivered.

The customer service team was then unable (or unwilling) to help sort out this issue. I was just told they had to 'look into this' and couldn't give me a date or anything else... I just got a lukewarm 'sorry' and nothing else. They were also unwilling to liaise with their own (!) kitchen installer and put that back onto us to sort out.

Luckily Ben seemed to be quite used to this kind of headache and was able to intervene when I told him what happened. I don’t know how he’s done it, but he managed to force the customer service team to pull out their fingers and have the kitchen delivered with a few days' delay.

The kitchen installation itself then went smoothly. The kitchen looks amazing. All perfect and we’re very happy.

But to summarize, the result would have been very different if we hadn’t ended up with Ben. If I understood things right, Ben is not an employee but a subcontractor for Wickes, which I find quite mindboggling. You’d think he is the kind of person a company would try to hire and keep at all cost! But for some reason, he is only subcontracting?!?! Well, in hindsight… I’d probably just buy any kitchen and hire Ben to install it – but that’s just me.

Wickes… if you’re reading this. Let me be clear... Ben saved your ass! Hire him! Promote him, and give him a rise. Seriously! You need good people!