Kris
Sorry to hear about this. Choosing cabinets are stress any way you look at it. Is there any chance that you paid for these with a credit card since you bought online? If so, there's a good chance you can lodge a dispute via the credit card company. They will launch an investigation and you are not required to make the payment while it is being investigated. Call your credit card company if so and see if they can help you resolve.

Kris,

I know how disappointing it is when you get something that's not what you were expecting. If the quotes they gave you stated they were for plywood, they should at least refund the difference in cost between plywood & particle board. I have been considering buycabinets as well. What brand and door style did you choose?

The emails mentioned plywood. Did the actual order form, that you signed, say plywood?

Just to clarify - buycabinets sells major manufacturer cabinets and not their own brand. I got Kitchencraft thru them and I was able to see the build quality at my local store. I was fine with this level of quality.

The actual order form is the real question.

Same thing happened to us. Ours were supposed to be solid cherry and we have that fake cherry paper on the facing inside the doors. The doors are solid, but that's the only truth they told us.

We were furious but had only ourselves to blame because this is what we saw in the showroom and didn't realize what we were looking at.

Long story short, I'm still ticked off, but the "contact paper" fools everyone and we're constantly complimented on how beautiful the cabinets are. The construction is good, the hinges and drawers work well, but it's not what we thought we were getting.

This local company mislead us by omitting some important facts about their product line.

We are disputing it with the credit card company because it's also not just plywood construction, but the actual quality of the construction. We have been in contact with buycabinets too.
With respect to the plywood, I thought I knew what I was signing and even later as I said above, I thought I was covered with the way it read. We learn by our mistakes and NOW I know what to look for on their paperwork, which isn't necessary, because I would never buy from them again or recommend them. I should not have been trusting of the voice over the phone who verbally assured me they were plywood construction.
The cabinets I bought are Arch Bay and I have never been able to find them here in So Cal and you all are right there too from this hard lesson. Don't buy what you can't see. I have the door samples, but that doesn't show me the rest of the construction, including the cherry "paper", which is majorly cheesy in my opinion.
The cabinet doors are Riverton Cherry Allspice with a Noire Glaze in the kitchen, Sheridan maple cotton in the laundry room, sheridan maple sesame chocolate glaze in the baths. The doors look great, but I'm worried about how they're going to hold up.
Monablair: How is the plastic/paper on the front of the doors holding up in the kitchen?
A final note: my contractor has been installing the cabinets and many of the screws are loose on the glides for the drawers, there are alot of the staples that didnt actually hold the edges together and he's having to reconstruct many of the cabinets and glue the edges because they're falling apart. He did say that they will probably be okay once they're hung on the wall, but this is a very disappointing event after spending almost 35k on the cabinets.

They've been up since 2001 and there is no sign of wear or peeling back. If you came into my home and opened a kitchen cabinet, you'd never think it was not cherry wood like the doors. But WE know it and it's still aggravating us that we were so careful about everything that went into this home and just messed up on this.

I cannot complain about the construction, though. The hinges are solid as are the drawer glides.

We had trim panels put on the ends of the cabinet runs and ends of the island and I suppose that adds to the disguise of the "innerds".

I share your pain and anquish. In my dreams the person we dealt with suffers with head to toe incurable, chronic hives!

I'm waiting to win the lottery and the first thing going is the cabinetry.

Not to excuse anyone involved in supplying your cabinets, but it is highly likely that the people with whom you were talking at buycabinets.com know nothing about cabinets nor about wood except what they have read in brochures or from the material in their computer. They just shuffle papers and take orders. I know you are disappointed, I would be also. A big expenditure for those cabinets. $35K. I am not sure how long I could restrain myself on that one. Right now, I am going around and around with a manufacturer of a $50.00 item that does not do what it claims to do.

You might post a question about this in the kitchen forum, quite a few people over there have used buycabinets and have Arch Bay cabinets or Kitchencraft. Buycabinets gets a lot of business from that forum so you might be able to use that as leverage. I've been talking to them and the salesman was very familiar with the site.

We had an issue with stair treads and banisters from a company. They were visually defected (warped and had large open knot holes). The cost of the stairs were over $5,000 and I wanted only to replace the defective parts - a total of $2500. This company refused, and I disputed my citicard (which I had for 18 years), and in the end - guess what - THEY WON! Reason why - I never shipped the items back to them because the weight of the items, AND I felt that they should be responsible. I have a folder with 40 pages of emails to and from vendor and photo's - all which was submitted to the credit card company. I had to end up settling (I paid $1800) in order to avoid the credit card suing me. I guess what I am really saying - is find a way to send the cabinets back!

Pretty scary stuff.....we're contracting cabinets with an online vendor ourselves [alshomesolutions.com]. They seem to be a direct vendor for several midwest brands....will definitely double check with them about several things as they are offering a steep discount on cabinets that we would otherwise be unable to affford....staples, plastic cherry paper?.....I don't think those adjectives belong in the same sentence as $35,000.00 cabinets......I would definitely be scouring the website, invoices and receipts and phone reps for the ins and outs of their return policy. There has got to be some sort of recourse at this point...tell them you need an RMA (return merchandise authorization) so you can return the cabinets as soon as possible. Escalate to the president if you have to.....looks like they have the BBB seal on their website.....use it as a threat...do whatever you have to and take a hit for the few hundred in shipping costs....at the end of the day you could probably do your house twice in Haas.

Here is a link that might be useful: Haas Cabinet

Thats pretty funny. Sorry, but telling a company that is denying your claim that you need an RMA just isn't work. If you want to take your chances and return the cabinets and contest the charges - thats certainly possible and the best course of action. However, if you've already started installing them and they aren't in the same condition whence they came - you're probably going to be out of look on that front as well.

And honestly, I don't see much of a difference between MDF and plywood. That isn't something to get too excited over. MDF is in many cases better than plywood. I'd prefer MDF over plywood in a lot of applications as its less prone to moisture issues, is harder (less prone to indentations), and generally moves much less. Now veneer inside frames, well its pretty common in a lot of mid-low end cabinets. If its plywood or mdf, you probably want a veneer anyhow.

All the other stuff - fine. But you really do need to take a look at what you signed and go from there. I don't believe they do a lot of manufacturing, so all their doing is selling a brand (or generic) of cabinet. It's up to you to determine what cabinet you want and how its made.

after build several houses I have always found custom cabinets cheaper and must better then any prebuilt "box cabinet"

We had an issue with a dining room table about 10 years ago. Not anywhere near the dollar amount you are talking, but considerable to us at the time.
I went through the whole dispute issue with my credit card. Since I pay in full each month, I had already paid for the item before the defect was discovered, I had no recourse through them.
We filed a complaint with the BBB, but they were basically no help either. What worked for us was reporting to the Attorney General's office for the state in which they were doing business. They actually followed up and since they had other complaints with this company, demanded that our money be refunded.
Unfortunately, the whole process took months which wouldn't really be that great of a solution in your case. But I guess other work could be ongoing while you were waiting.

Can you threaten to post to the kitchen forum and send the company a link? Let them see just how many people read this forum and the amount of business they could lose if you post negative feedback about them!

Kris,

I don't really have any thing to help you. I just wanted to say I'm sorry you're going through this. Man, building a house can be a witch.
Oh, and I'm with you, I haven't seen that heavy a rain like we had last Friday for in a long loooong time!