ᐅ IKEA Kitchen Quality and User Experiences?

@Alex85
Kitchen manufacturers also offer replacement parts for a long time, and depending on the quality level, replacing fronts is not that expensive.

I don’t understand where the 10-12 week delivery times come from; it can be done much faster.

If I may say so, it’s simply incorrect to compare IKEA to other well-known kitchen manufacturers. Kitchen manufacturers offer various product lines, both for smaller budgets and for those who want to invest more.

The issue is that very few buyers dare to have their kitchen planned according to their budget in a kitchen showroom. Browsing at IKEA is not a personal experience at first, and you are basically anonymous. Designing a kitchen yourself on the computer makes the process anonymous initially, without having to disclose any budget expectations. If you see it’s getting too expensive overall, you just remove one item or another. In my opinion, IKEA benefits from this approach.

@Neige @ypg

done

Regards, Bauexperte

Neige schrieb:


The problem is that hardly any buyers dare to plan their kitchen according to their budget at the kitchen showroom.

But this could also be due to the general kitchen pricing policy. For example, if you say €12,000 (about $13,000), which is a reasonable price for a good kitchen, you don’t get anything included at their normal prices. The dealers’ strategy is the opposite: they first ask what you want without looking at the price. I had quite a confrontation with the consultant there. She kept asking questions, like “Which faucet would you like?” – without prices I couldn’t say which one I’d pick. I liked one better here, but it wouldn’t be worth an extra €200 (about $220) compared to that one. We spent three hours debating whether the countertop should extend into the window or not. In the end, the salesperson said at the third appointment that the extra cost was a mere €45 (about $50) for a deeper countertop. I was really upset—so much stress for nothing...
And it went on like this from one item to the next. In the end, just by looking at the price lists I didn’t feel like I got the best value for my money. Maybe I could have saved €500 (about $550) if I had chosen slightly “worse” handles or something else.

At the end of the day, it’s really no surprise that people use the IKEA system. You can immediately see the cost of every extra, easily check how you fit your budget, and you can, for example, first choose the expensive cabinet boxes with cheaper fronts and upgrade to nicer fronts in a few years. I have now used the new METOD system as a cabinet in the laundry room, and its quality is not really worse than our kitchen builder kitchen. And I just buy replacement parts by simply driving to a nearby store...

The delivery time for reorders was eight weeks for us. That is not acceptable for a single door nowadays. When the mistakes were on their side, deliveries were much faster, of course.

Neige schrieb:

If I may say so, it is simply incorrect to compare IKEA with other well-established kitchen manufacturers. Kitchen manufacturers also offer different product lines, both for smaller budgets and for those willing to spend more.

The issue is that very few buyers dare to have a kitchen planned according to their budget in a kitchen showroom. Browsing at IKEA is initially less personal, and you’re basically anonymous. Designing a kitchen yourself on the PC there makes the whole process anonymous at first, without having to state any price expectations. If you see that the total gets too expensive, you simply remove one item or another. In my opinion, IKEA also benefits from this approach.

As I mentioned, I cannot confirm this, because I have visited various suppliers with clear budget specifications.

Which product lines would, for example, be better than IKEA? (at the same price or cheaper)

Payday schrieb:
The delivery time for reorders was 8 weeks for us. That is not reasonable for a door nowadays. Where their mistake was, of course, it went much faster.

Maybe it’s because the kitchen supplier wanted to offer you a fair price for the door and therefore ordered the door along with a matching order, since charging for a single door separately might have been twice as expensive.

Can anyone here recommend a kitchen manufacturer that is roughly in the same price range as IKEA, so we have an idea of where to look?

What I like about IKEA is that you can clearly see the price of each item. This way, you can carefully consider whether the extra cost is worth it or not. At kitchen showrooms, it feels like you have to haggle like at a bazaar, and even then, you’re never sure if the price is fair.

We will probably start by configuring a kitchen from IKEA to get an idea of the minimum amount we need to spend on our kitchen. After that, we can see if it’s worth paying a bit more for one from a kitchen showroom.

Best regards,
Sabine