CENTURY KITCHEN & BATH

Well, things started out well. I called Century Kitchens on the phone and described my project and what I was looking for. I am an architect so I had a good idea of what I was looking for. I made an appontment and visited their showroom. The showroom was large and had many sample kitchens and baths. The sales woman was helpful in describing what was available. They make all their cabinets themselves and carry three lines along with Wood-Mode and Brookhaven. However, much of their sales appear to be to contractrors, not homeowners. They have a very small installation of Wood-Mode and mainly push their own brand (more on this later). The quality of their brands ranges from very low, for their lower priced cabinets to fair to good for thieir best cabinets. They have a limited range of cabinet doors and finishes. I asked for a price for both Wood-Mode and Century (their brand) cabinets and was immeadiatly told that I could get a 45% discount off their cabinets but only 10% off the Wood-Mode cabinets. I was given a representative price for a single representative cabinet which steered me away from Wood-Mode. They explained that they could offer such a competative price since they manufactured locally and offered limited options, styles and colors. Seemed like a believable explanation. I asked for specifications for their cabinets and was told to look on line for the details since they had no printed literature (this should have been red flag #1 - every other cabinet shop had reams of literature). I asked for a complete price and was told one would be worked up in a week. That seemed long but I left and that's when the problems started. Their website is terrible. It goes down regularly and it took a week before it was repaired (I called the store about it several times) and I could successfully get to it and see the specifications for their cabinets. The sales woman emailed me with questions which I answered, however she didn't once send a price quote (red flag #2). I worked with them for over about 6 weeks, visiting the store twice and emailing and speaking with the sales woman (or trying to) to work out details. It took about a week each time before my emails and calls were replied to. Eventually, I pressed for a price, since I still didn't have anything but a price for one representative cabinet and low and behold I found out that there was no 45% discount! That put the cost for their medium quality cabinets on par with quotes I received for much higher quality Wood-Mode cabinets - in short they were way over-priced. I think they expected me to give up, having wasted so much time with them and order their cabinets. In the end it was a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME. Go elseware. This was a real scam and a waste of weeks of my time.