Kitchen Studio, Wellington

The quality of the kitchen was superb however the service is definitely questionable. For a $26,000 investment it is always comforting to know that your contracts and paperwork with a company are in safe hands however after completing our kitchen in April 2012, we received an email from the franchisee 10 months later, stating we had an outstanding payment which he wanted to resolve by the end of the week (he emailed on thursday) or he would pass on the matter to debt collectors. We asked what this matter was for, as we had been in touch with Kitchen Studio after the completion of the job regarding kitchen accessories and this did not come up in our conversation even though we dealt with the same people. We were advised that the outstanding fee was for the removal of our old kitchen, which in turn made us point out that the removal process took less than 3 hours (which was included in the contract) as we were on premises overseeing the work of other tradesmen in our home. We had been prompt with our response and sent an email response back within the hour asking why this supposed out standing payment had gone unnoticed for this long (especially seeing that all his incoming and outgoing payment paperwork should have been in order for last financial year), as well as pointing out that there was no invoice attached to his email - yet he was demanding payment and subtly threatening to take us to the debt collectors. I also pointed out that our payments for our kitchen had been made in 2 prompt payments as per contract and when we received our final receipt and inspection there was no mention of additional costs. We did not hear back from him till a week later after our response. I asked that we keep a paper trail and asked that he respond in email which has yet to be responded to. It has completely ruined our faith and trust in this business and we will be looking to another company for our next renovation project.