I purchased a modular kitchen from Home Town at New Town, Kolkata in 2019. It was installed in late 2018 or early 2019, but started using from June 2019.
It had 10 years warranty and was quite expensive. All metallic parts are from the world-famous German Company Hettich.
Within the first three months, the dustbin started to rust and by the sixth month, it was fully rusted. Hometown said Hettich supplied components are not covered under warranty against rusting. They said water has fallen on it and held me responsible for the rust. They expect that the kitchen will be completely dry including the sink area. After a lot of requests and persuasion, they replaced it. Now surprisingly two years have passed but there is no rusting on the replaced dustbin.
It is still a puzzle for me. The new dustbin is placed at the same place at the same house but it is free from any rust even after more than two years whereas the previous one caught rust after three months.
Now coming to the hinges. Around 8 to 10 hinges are rusted after six months of use and one got broken after one year of use. No water falls on these hinges. These are supposed to be from world leaders Hettich!!! Hometown are not replacing them free of cost as these are not covered under warranty. The hinges in my three wash rooms are locally procured from ordinary shops, continuously exposed to water and there is no rust after three years and working fine. Never seen in life a hinge breaking after a year and getting rusted only after six months that also in an indoor environment. These are very complicated and intricately designed steel hinges and not ordinary ones.
In my opinion, all the so-called Hettich items are either duplicate or extremely cheap and hence not covered under warranty. These are not made of stainless steel as it should be.
One cabinet door became bent, on its own, at the top left corner after a year or so. As a replacement the door which they sent took six months or more to arrive and it also got bent from the same place just after two months.
There is another cabinet door which had an installation problem from the very beginning. It is perpetually misaligned, hanging and doesn't close properly. Till date, they couldn't repair it. The skirting at the floor level of this door is also broken. In an overhead cabinet, the hydraulic jack came out from the mounting. One frame of a cabinet broke out from the mounting and became totally loose.
All these happened in 2022. So early. Nothing like this happened in other cabinets or cupboards in my house. I have neither heard anything like this from anybody else nor happened in my own life. I have stopped lodging any complaint nowadays. Their repair work is very poor. If they repair something then another thing breaks or gets misaligned.
The warranty is an eyewash and the money is a waste. An extremely overpriced package for an inferior product.
I am feeling totally disappointed and will never buy any product from Home Town again.
