LOWE'S OF HAPPY VALLEY

Five months to get kitchen cabinets installed, but I still give Lowes a C. If my experience wasn't the remodel from h***, I know it passed through there on its way to me. As mentioned, it took five months to get cabinets that were promised for a six week delivery. Sadly, I have a dozen friends who come to my home every week who watched this fiasco unfold. Cabinet workmanship: - The cabinet configurator program for Schuler cabinets allowed us to design an unworkable configuration (blind corner next to a stove). My wife discovered this fact on-line the day before installation was supposed to begin - The unworkable cabinet was also defective. - the cabinet configurator program didn't remove an unwanted finishing option in an open cabinet. We couldn't just leave it because the config contained another identical cabinet that showed up without the option. - Many door stiles went as much as one eighth inch above the rails they were supposed to mate with. - Many doors were warped. - Replacement doors did not come close to the same color of the original cabinets. (Honey maple vs natural maple). - The end panel on an end cabinet stack had a huge blemish in the middle of the panel. - One drawer soft close mechanism did not work correctly. - One replacement cabinet door was made too large. Process: This was the monkey wrench in the project. I already mentioned the bad configurator program. This is a program that Schuler uses that was "scaled down" to work with Lowes computers. So the process is half manual. In the twenty-first century this is absurd. Lowes' ordering system does not keep track of things as it should, allowing things to get lost or forgotten. The way Lowes and Schuler do business guaranteed there would be a long drawn out process. For example, the process does not allow Lowes to order replacement cabinets unless it has the defective cabinets in its posession. This was also absurd, given Lowes delays of several days for each instance. Summary: Schuler cabinets - Great cabinets, shoddy workmanship. Lowes corporate - very poor performance, poor vendor management, poor computer tools. Lowes local people - excellent. They tried their best, but were defeated by their system. Installation crew - excellent. After everything I have a showpiece installation. In fairness, mine was a bad experience, but the local Lowes people were nice and worked with me closely to get things right. They get an A+ while corporate gets a D. And a Schuler representative picked up my defective doors at the behest of the factory, who expressed great concern over the quality issues and promised to analyze the defects and find and fix their cause.

They were very good. Everything was as they said. They sent someone to measure, delivered the hardwood and did a very good job with installation.