Kitchen delays 'rob' family of Christmas (From Gazette Series)

Kitchen delays 'rob' family of Christmas

A CAM family has been reduced to using their downstairs toilet as a makeshift kitchen following a catalogue of errors and let downs by an interiors company.

Melanie Armstrong, of Birch Road, was forced to feed her two young children, Jessica,7, and Jack,5, microwave meals and wash up dishes in the downstairs bathroom while it took five months for her new kitchen to be fitted.

Mrs Armstrong is seeking a refund and compensation from The Kitchen Studio for the kitchen she ordered from the firm's Cheltenham outlet in October last year.

The £6,000 kitchen was due to be fitted in early December but after the family dismantled their old cabinets and fittings they were told work would not start until January. The delay meant the Armstrongs had to store 72 boxes and spend Christmas without a proper kitchen.

"It caused huge problems and ruined our family Christmas," Mrs Armstrong told the Gazette this week.

Since then the family says it has been treated appallingly and claims it has endured:

* missing items on delivery * no heating for two weeks during a cold February * a fitter who turned up for three days then left after being paid £1,000 * having a non-Corgi registered boiler fitted * phone calls not returned

Mrs Armstrong is also unhappy with the kitchen cupboards, which she says are chipped, and uneven surfaces of the units that have now been fitted.

"We were cramped into one half of the living room," said Mrs Armstrong, who hopes to warn other people about the problems she has experienced. "How we lived with it I don't know.

"I have had to take time off work to sort out the problems and have had to rely on microwave meals. I even had to take meals to my mum's up the road to cook and bring them back in the car.

"It is the kind of thing you can put up with for two weeks when you know you are going to get a new kitchen at the end of it, but this has been endless."

Martin Bruton, consumer advice manager at Gloucestershire Trading Standards, said the company would only have broken its contract if Mrs Armstrong had insisted that the work was finished by a certain date and that arrangement was not kept.

He said that if reasonable care and skill had not been employed to fit the kitchen, a breach of contract may have occurred.

Mr Bruton advised that the family make a list of what they consider defective and pass it on to The Kitchen Studio and to trading standards.

No one from The Kitchen Studio in Cheltenham would comment on the Armstrong's complaint. A spokesman for the Bernstein Group, which is responsible for the firm, said the complaint was being dealt with but admitted it was taking a long time.

She said the person responsible for dealing with complaints had now left the company. The area manager was not available as the Gazette went to press.