May 2021 by Alexandra Eddington
*UPDATE: My situation has NOT been a fluke. This company doesn't stand by their work, and they will manipulate and lie to get out of fixing their problems properly. Do yourself a favor and DO NOT use this company. I'm aware that MULTIPLE homes who had cabinets installed by them are having the SAME issues. One star.*I purchased a new home less than one year ago. Iona cabinet company supplied the cabinets. They’re beautiful, white, craftsman style cabinets. Just the kind I would’ve picked out.About a month or two in our home, cabinets started chipping. Small amounts, but I worried that the fact that it started so soon would mean that it would only get worse with time. I typically don’t like to bother people, and try to just fix things on my own if I can. I’d rather just suffer in silence usually. But about six months in, the chipping had gotten ridiculous.I couldn’t clean the ledge portions of about 30% of the cabinet faces without paint just peeling off. Portions of the tops of the drawers and carcass were flaking away (about 50% of the back of the drawer face angle on some drawers) Mind you, I use a lightly damp rag to clean my cabinets. Nothing crazy. But the paint would just peel off. So it got to the point where I was afraid to wipe down my cabinets. At that point, I decided to call the company.I got ahold of them, and they said they’d send someone out. I didn’t hear from him for two weeks. Finally, after trying to contact him again, he got back with me, and sent someone to look at the cabinets. When he looked at them, he said it was probably because of our sink. Which, if I was to believe that to be true, the chipping should have only been localized to the sink. Which it wasn’t. And I always clean up water if it drips down. I’m not hard on my cabinets. And above all, kitchen cabinets should be able to handle a little bit of water.I tried to kindly communicate that. I don’t like to be a cranky customer. Finally, I explained what happens when I clean them, and he said it was probably because the rag was damp. As if I’m supposed to clean my cabinets with... not something damp?He eventually said he would fix the chipped spots. He took about 50% of our cabinet fronts with him. I assumed it would be a couple of days.Two. Months. I tried contacting him. He would dismiss my calls. I’m talking one or two rings and then voicemail, and it’s not like I was blowing up his phone. I waited a month before finally calling. And after that probably only called two other times. He would talk to my builder, but not to me. So fine. I communicated with my builder. The builder said the company had been effected by the pandemic. Which I have sympathy for, as I worked in the hospital at the time. So I tried to be patient. I’m sure they will be awesome and worth the wait and we won’t have to worry about this chipping issue anymore.By the time we got our cabinet fronts back, we were just so relieved. We have small children and we had to store a significant number of kitchen items in random places to keep them out of trouble. For two months. But when they came, I was gracious and understanding. They pulled out some cardboard and a can of spray paint and touched up the spots on the cabinet carcasses. I was surprised. But just assumed they know better than I do. And I was just relieved to have my kitchen back.Here we are, and it’s been another two months. They are chipping again. Bigger chips. I’m so exhausted with this and frustrated with this company that I don’t even want to contact them to fix it. I don’t think it will be worth the time. I’m going to have to try and fix it myself, or find a way to pay someone else to do it, which absolutely shouldn’t be my problem. I can’t tell you how many white kitchens I’ve been in, and I’ve never ever seen anything like this.I truly feel like I have been patient and understanding, and that I was taken advantage of and shrugged off for completely valid concerns. I will never use this company. I won’t even have them come fix their own errors again because I just don’t know that they can.
