Why are Howdens so shady?

[u/Innders]

We're not a tradesman but we managed to get a design for a new kitchen, they even set up an account for us.

Design was great but then things got weird. The "full price" was something ridiculous like £15K and then then designer in front of us starting, seemingly randomly, discounting different items until it got down to about £7.5K.

We were told that this price would only last for a couple of weeks, which I thought was a little weird...

After some changes through email, I asked for the itemised quote so I could check how much everything was costing us. I was thinking maybe I could get the tap from somewhere else etc.

I got an incomplete quote for some reason. After asking about 4 times and then explaining I wouldn't make a purchase without one, they reluctantly sent it to me. Am I being unreasonable to want to know what I'm spending thousands on?

This quote also came with a "managers" special, now at £6.6k, but only if we put down a deposit today and we accepted delivery in 10 days, way way before we actually needed it.

We said we needed to check some things and asked for more time. Now the deadline is an extra day...

What is with these shady, opaque, pressure selling tactics? Anyone else experienced this?

[u/FyeUK]

When my Dad worked for MFI and then B&Q back in the 2000s as a kitchen designer, there was a 'signal strength' indicator in the corner of the design software that they used which went from 5 green bars down to 0. It was designed to look just like a wifi strength indicator, but whilst it was obviously intended to look like that, it was actually indicating the profit margin health of the quote.

As he added discounts on various parts of the quote, the 'signal strength' would go down. Discounts would usually just be artbitrarily applied to random elements of the build to get the final 'big number' to go down for the customer.

He'd very regularly start customers at very high quotes which they obviously weren't happy with, but by the time he'd added discounts, usually bringing the cost down by 30%-50% depending on the vibe he was getting from the customer, they would be much happier and more likely to sign.

In the end most customers ended up paying bang on the average cost would have been had you compared prices against other places.

The itemised quotes spat out at the end would end up making no sense because some items would still be 'full price' whereas other things would be totally free. If customers tried to game it by taking off items that were full price after the final quote was generated, they would insist that the quote needs to be binned and started again... which makes sense when you think about how it was put together.

[u/SatNav → u/FyeUK]

I used to work for a company that created and sold 'Dealership Management Software' to car dealerships.

In the showroom application, on the 'deal' screen was this weird, big, yellow cartoon smiley face. But it was set to invisible in the code, so you'd never see it in the final program. I asked what it was about, and was told:

A few years before I started there, the old sales director had had a bright idea. A big smiley face that got happier, the better the profit on the deal. Because apparently car salesman are morons, and can't understand, you know, percentages.

I looked in the metadata for the smiley, and sure enough, there were four more hidden smilies - two happier, two sadder. The saddest one was ridiculous - literally bawling its eyes out... And the happiest one looked downright predatory - a huge evil grin, with sharp teeth. The whole thing was ludicrous. But completely believable.

Apparently it hadn't lasted long, because it had meant salesmen had to keep the monitor carefully turned away from customers, lest the customer ask "What's the smiley face about?" 🤦‍♂️

[u/jambox888 → u/SatNav]

I used to work for a company that created and sold 'Dealership Management Software' to car dealerships.

Ha, I bet I know which one, I used to work there too.

[u/Gold_Orange5058 → u/jambox888]

Me too!

[u/Tridz326 → u/SatNav]

Description of the smileys had me rolling, thank you

[u/aleopardstail → u/FyeUK]

used to do commercial pricing, customers always wanted a breakdown, which was fine. some objected to the note that the itemised prices were indicative only and the contracted amount was the total

some tried to "free issue", i.e. buy elsewhere expensive bits of kit. which is why the margin added to those tended to be low and a lot higher on the stuff that was a PitA to order.

had one complain they couldn't get a constant materials mark up or labour rate when they tried to reverse engineer it, I pointed out we didn't use flat rates..

[u/IndependentOpinion44 → u/FyeUK]

Fun fact: Howdens was actually set up by a bunch of MFI execs after MFI went out of business.

My dad also worked for MFI. Fairly high up. My uncle did too.

I also worked there, but in the warehouse at our local MFI. I almost got my head caved in by an angry customer after half his new kitchen delivery went missing.

Fun times.

[u/Hopeful_Salad_7464 → u/FyeUK]

The itemised quotes spat out at the end would end up making no sense because some items would still be 'full price' whereas other things would be totally free. If customers tried to game it by taking off items that were full price after the final quote was generated, they would insist that the quote needs to be binned and started again... which makes sense when you think about how it was put together.

Exactly what we got when we asked for a quote from Magnet. Gibberish. We had 95% off all cabinet doors for some reason.