Last year my wife and I had the awful experience of purchasing a kitchen through Freedom. After one month of waiting for a response to my emails or a return to my phone calls, I've decided to share the debacle we endured with the internet.
- We were told our date of delivery and given a 1 hour delivery window that was wrong by 22 hours. This caused my wife to take unnecessary time off work, and caused my booked trades to lose 8 working hours. Consequentially, a portion of our kitchen was not completed.
- We were told approximately half our matte black kitchen was unavailable. With our only other options to cancel or change our kitchen colour, we agreed to be sent white gloss items in the interim. We were promised we could keep the white gloss items "to make a cubby house or use as doors in the garage" and told the items will be replaced at no cost to us.
- Freedom organized their trades to replace our white components with the matte black items before they were actually available. My wife had to call, notify them and rearrange this.
- Freedom's trades packed and took the white gloss items without our permission. When I rang and questioned this, I was told they would get back to me. I can't see the complexity in this situation however it's been about six weeks and my call hasn't been returned.
- Freedom's trades only complete half the job because, according to them, they weren't being paid for it.
- Freedom's staff (who I was surprised to learn have the job title of customer service officers) were rude and unsympathetic when we rang to ask why only half the job was completed. It was finally agreed that the job should've been done and that they would organize this. However, their trades were now unavailable for weeks.
- Freedom agreed to pay for any trades that we could obtain sooner. We found a company and rang back to notify them and ask how it would be organized. It was then this offer was retracted without any explanation.
- Freedom's customer service officers were again unprofessional, yelling over the top of us and driving my wife to tears. It wasn't until I requested to talk to a manager that we discovered the reason the offer was retracted was the cost of our trades.
- Freedom agreed to contribute $150 to completing the kitchen that they should've completed in the first place. Because our kitchen was not functional, we were forced to comply and put forward the extra $250.
- When we received further correspondence regarding collecting our $150, we were told we must sign a document stating our customer experience will remain confidential.
- I emailed and politely declined the $150, explaining that dealing with Freedom was a trainwreck and the reasons behind this. It's been one month and not even an insincere apology tabled in a response has been received.
In short, Freedom turned an exciting experience for a young couple into a stressful nightmare. I don't hate anyone enough to recommend they head to Freedom for their kitchen renovations.
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