One kitchen purchase, three different sets of rights
A kitchen purchase is rarely a single agreement. You sign a contract with the supplier for the units and the fitting, you may pay some or all of it through a loan or a credit card, and before any of that you usually hand over a deposit weeks or months before a single cabinet arrives. Each of those sits under a different part of the law, and each gives you a different remedy when something goes wrong.
- The contract is the agreement between you and the supplier for the goods and the fitting work. It sets out what you are entitled to receive, and what counts as a failure if the kitchen or the installation falls short of it.
- The finance is a separate agreement, usually with a bank, a card provider or a lender, and it can carry its own rights if the supplier does not deliver, on top of whatever you can claim from the supplier directly.
- The deposit is money handed over before the kitchen exists, sometimes months before delivery, and what happens to it if the supplier stops trading or the order falls through depends on how it was paid and what was agreed at the time you paid it.
Which of the three matters to you depends on what has gone wrong, not just that something has. A late delivery is a contract question. A supplier that closes between taking your deposit and fitting the kitchen is a different question, and the answer often turns on whether you paid by card, by loan or by cheque.
How the Consumer Rights Act tests your kitchen
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 sets three tests for the units and worktops you buy, and a separate rule for what happens if the person fitting them gets it wrong. Both apply across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
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Three tests the goods have to pass
Your kitchen has to match what was described to you in the showroom or brochure, be of satisfactory quality given its price and age, and be fit for the purpose you bought it for. A door finish that doesn't match the sample, a carcass that arrives damaged, or a soft-close hinge that fails within weeks can each fall short of one of these three tests.
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When the fitting is part of the same contract
If you bought a supply-and-fit kitchen from one trader and the fitting itself is done badly, doors hung out of true, a worktop joint that has failed, a plinth left loose, the units are treated as not conforming to the contract even though the goods themselves were fine when delivered.
This only applies where the installation was part of what you contracted for. Fitting arranged separately, with your own tradesperson, sits outside section 15 and is judged on the standard of that service instead.
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What you can ask the trader to do about it
The Act sets an order.
First: repair or replacementThe trader gets to put things right first, whether that means re-fitting a door, replacing a damaged panel or reworking a joint, within a reasonable time and without causing you significant inconvenience.
If that doesn't fix it: price reduction or final rejectionWhere the repair fails, drags on too long, or the disruption itself becomes unreasonable, you can ask for money off the price or reject the kitchen and claim a refund.
Where a supplier disputes any of this, Trading Standards is the body that enforces the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) publishes the guidance it works from.
Cancelling, withdrawing and who else is on the hook if it goes wrong
Cancelling a kitchen ordered in your home
If you signed the contract somewhere other than the supplier's own premises, most often at your kitchen table after a home visit, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you 14 days to cancel, under regulation 29. You do not need a reason. The clock usually starts from the day the goods are delivered, or from the day you sign if the contract covers fitting alone with no goods involved.
Why made-to-measure kitchens are treated differently
A kitchen built to your own room's dimensions does not fit neatly into that 14-day right. Regulation 28(1)(b) sets aside cancellation for goods made to the consumer's specification or clearly personalised, and most fitted units qualify once an order is placed, because they are cut and drilled for your kitchen and nobody else's. Whether that exception covers the whole contract, or only the units themselves where fitting is billed separately, is not something this page can settle for you. It is a fair question to put to Trading Standards, or to the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI), before you assume either way.
Withdrawing from the finance separately from the kitchen
Where the kitchen is paid for through a regulated credit agreement, a loan or hire-purchase arrangement covered by the Consumer Credit Act 1974, section 66A gives you a further 14 days to withdraw from that agreement. This right runs on its own timetable, separate from any cancellation right over the kitchen contract itself. The two periods can start on different days, so it is worth writing down when each one began.
When the card company shares the liability
Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes a credit card or finance provider jointly liable with the retailer for a single item with a cash price over £100 and up to £30,000. If a supplier goes out of business, or refuses to put right a kitchen that does not match what was agreed, this is what lets you claim against the card provider directly. It is one reason the way a deposit or balance is paid is worth thinking about before you sign.
Once you know your rights, check whether the kitchen itself will fit.
Enter your carcass height, leg height, worktop thickness and the appliance's niche range from its instructions, and the checker returns the finished worktop height and whether the appliance fits, with the adjustment needed. It works from the numbers you enter, so a mismeasurement gives a mismatched answer.