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China Manufacturers...need your opions, please

14 years ago

Would like to hear of your experiences with China made cabinets,

I'm looking at some nice cabinets manufactured in China, but made from America and Canada wood.

The company I'm looking at has an A bbb rating with no complaints in the last 36 months.

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Comments (8)

azstoneconsulting
14 years ago
IMHO - you'll need to be real careful...

I have had good experience with SOME pre-fabbed Granite Blanks from China

but other products - well..... not so good - electrical tools especially - (CA CA)

Cabinets may be OK, but service when something gets screwed up or you're
lacking a part might make you want to slit your wrists....

and EVERYTHING is going to be in METRIC - just a heads up if you're an INCHES
kind of person (like in Harleys, etc)

BE CAREFUL

hth

kevin
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km5tq
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks Kevin,
The company is cabinetgiant.com and is based in Kansas. They have a quality control that inspects the shipments from China.
Pinnacle cabinets are part of Cabinet Giant.
The fact they have a good bbb record gives me a little confidence, but I still have doubts.
I've just read some negative things about china cabinets and want to be sure I'm not going to make a mistake.
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azstoneconsulting
14 years ago
Well, if they have happy customers - I'd be feeling better already - let me give
you a case in point here in the PHX market area - we have a guy who sells
pre-fab Granite, sinks and cabinets. His name is Charles Yang - and the guy is
a totally cool dude - his products are really good - I have only worked with
his stone tops - and they are the best pre-fabbed tops I've seen in a long time!

Since I am NOT a cabinet dude - I don't get into that - but I know that Charles
has a very good reputation here in PHX and I refer a lot of customers to him.

IF you have that same kind of "Charles" there by you - then - no worries....

hth

kevin
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steff_1
14 years ago
Be sure to get the entire costs up front and compare. I priced some cabinets from China for a flip house and found that the final total ended up on the high side. The company charged a lot more more for spacers, trim, and installation than locally made cabinets. They also used wood from China which may have looked odd to potential buyers. The company you are looking at seems to have solved that problem by using wood from North America. The quality was good for the price.
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ccoombs1
14 years ago
Using wood from America really solves nothing if the wood isn't turned into plywood here in this country as well. Nothing toxic about trees or raw logs, regardless of source. But if the raw logs are sent to china and turned into plywood for the boxes and then into cabinets, I'd be a whole lot more concerned. I think I'd do a whole lot more research before settling for a potentially substandard and dangerous product. It's really a shame. I used to trust China as a source, but after all the Melamine incidents, the lead paint on children's toys and the formalhyde in the milk problems, I no longer trust Chinese-made produces.

The whole "american wood" thing seems like a sales pitch to me, designed to instill confidance. All it does is make me even more suspicious.
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User
14 years ago
It's not just the wood for the face frames and doors that can be a problem. It's the plywood for the boxes. (Especially the plywood for the boxes!) It's the finishes on that wood.(Can you say lead paint and toxic varnishes!) It's the adhesives. (VOC's) It's the hardware. (Crappy fall apart low quality metal poorly cast with no finishing work.) It's the shipping. (You get enough issues just shipping cabinets from one location in North America to another.) It's the quality control. (A whole kitchen of dreck and you're waiting on another slow boat from CHina, literally.) It's the whole package. (Inexpensive isn't always cheap, but cheap is always cheap.)

Just think. If you find a "competitive" price on North American hardwood cabinets that are Chinese made, think how on earth they manage to get a competetive price when they have to ship the wood to China to get the process started in the first place. Think of how many corners they have to cut to get something shipped all over the globe be price competitive. It's not just the slave labor wages and child labor and the questionable work conditions. It's the lower quality everything! that goes into making something cheap be, well, CHEAP.

I wouldn't touch them with a thousand yard pole personally, and I've had the chance to rep some Chinese lines for my budget lines. I refuse to. I have yet to see a single Chinese line that meets MY quality control standard. If I wouldn't put them in my garage, I wouldn't put them in anyone else's kitchen.

Just ask them where their KCMA certification is. That's the absolute minimum standard to which cabinets should be built, and virtually all North American production manufacturers subject their lines to be certified to that minimum. Not so the Chinese ones. Be very very careful.
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pence
14 years ago
I agree with live wire oak--all the chinese caibnets i have seen look cheap inside and out , and of course are. Unless your building an apt complex and you really need to save money, I would look elsewhere
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km5tq
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I will definitely be careful. Think I will check out other resources.
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