Biggest Mistakes when Buying Built in Furniture: Number 2

Welcome to the second blog in our biggest mistake series – we’re helping you find the perfect fitted furniture first time around. Over the many years working in the industry, we’ve noticed that lots of people make mistakes when it comes to commissioning built in furniture, so we’ve decided to share them with the aim of making sure more people receive the best quality and value. After all, fitted furniture should be a lifelong investment so it’s important to get it right.

Last month on the blog we discussed not securing a guarantee as the first and foremost mistake in choosing a fitted furniture supplier. So what’s next?

Our second biggest mistake when it comes to buying furniture is choosing a company without a good reputation. In business, reputation is everything, so it is absolutely vital to check out the repute of a company before handing over your cash and signing on the dotted line.

How do I find out if a company has a good or bad rep?

Start Online

The internet comes in useful for many things, and this is one of them! As an amazing research tool, it is incredibly easy to look up a business online and find out pretty much everything there is to know about them.

First things first – don’t be fooled by a well-designed website. Websites are great for giving you basic information but don’t just believe everything the company says about itself. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding – what are their past customers saying?

Reviews and Testimonials

A reliable company that has established a good reputation and is well respected will have countless testimonials. Testimonials can come in various formats: written as an email or typed from a verbal testimonial – or better still, a video testimonial. A business and its customers have to go to great lengths to produce a video testimonial, so it really shows the care and attention they put into all of their work. It also makes the testimonial more genuine – how many times have you given a company 15 minutes of your time because you appreciated their work so much?

How do I know if a Review is Real?

It’s difficult to trust everything you read on the web. On independent review sites, sometimes you can check out a user to see how many other useful and honest reviews they have posted, but that still doesn’t prove if they have a vested interest in the business you are researching.

Whether it is written on the company website, Google+ or on specialist review sites such as TrustATrader or Yelp, there is no way of knowing for certain if the review is real. That is why you need to ensure you don’t gamble with a company off the back off one review – check multiple websites and make sure there are numerous reviews which all agree the company did a good job.

Also put it all into perspective with the whole picture– if there are one or two bad reviews compared to 100 five star reviews, chances are you’ll have a positive experience working the organisation. The bad reviews could be from a competitor or the client may have had a rare misunderstanding with the company. Remember, more people voice their opinion if they’re unhappy with a service rather than if they’re satisfied with it.

You can see the full booklet called “The 7 biggest mistakes people make when buying fitted furniture and how to avoid them” to the right of this blog post.

How Long Have the Company Been Trading?

To be sure you are choosing the right company, you could even do some extra research into the business and the business owners. Nobody can hide in this digital age! How long has the company been established? If they have been around for a long time they should have some strong credentials. Remember, if you search for the company and there is no extra information, chances are it is a fairly new and inexperienced company. This is often the case with businesses which are offering lower prices than the others. No information = no reputation.

A company with a good reputation has that good reputation to upkeep – they will take pride in their work and go out of their way to make sure the client is happy with the end result and the service provided. At Empatika, we have countless testimonials and reviews all over the web and Tristan’s credentials are easy to find – just type Tristan Titeux into Google! Here is just one example of our testimonials:

To sign up to our full booklet of the 7 biggest mistakes click on the email sign up form to the right of this blog.