Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Been a while

Sorry that it's been a while since posting to this blog and or replying to comments. I forget that people are still commenting here with most empathizing and or sharing their own horrid experience with Ikea. Then I get the ones like you see quoted below and it reminds me that some people take their own personal ownership of places like Ikea and feel the need to defend while throwing insults at those they don't agree with. To me, and especially now that I am no longer in a very angry phase of my life, they are simply being rude. And for what? The defence of a multi-national corporation like Ikea. And they say I need to get a life. To be fair not all who disagree with me are rude and I surely don't mind being disagreed with. Heck it is what makes the world interesting. Having said that I present two examples of disagreement, one being rude and the other being funny. You decide for yourself. Oh and do take a minute to read the other comments as some of them are very interesting:

Rude:
beinghonest said...
i'm sorry, but this truly is just pitiful. i shop IKEA all the time ad not only do i get GREAT service when i'm in there, but if something breaks (which NEVER happens for no reason) i am always given a replacement piece. no problem. they probably were "rude" to you because they serve human beings, not arrogant pricks like you. all that "time" you wasted... you probably caused it. i'm sorry but this whole "saga" is disgusting, self- centered, and annoying. grow up. IKEA is great.

FYI: Being honest wasn't honest or brave enough to leave a comment that could be replied to. Typical. Not to mention that I stated a couple of times that I don't think I would have had any of these problems had I had an actual store to walk into and talk face-to-face with someone. Instead, as a mail-order customer all dealings where done over the phone or via e-mail. Apparently to this person being critical does not include being thorough and reading the WHOLE story. And I'm the one who needs to see a psychiatrist. Ha!

Funny:
anonymous said...
Go. see. a. psychiatrist. At once.

To that I say "thanks I have and it helped a lot, but I still won't shop at Ikea again." ;)

Well that's it for now. Shop at Ikea at your own risk. To those with nothing but positive experiences with Ikea and their products I say "congratulations, good for you. I would expect nothing less from the biggest furniture company in the world." I only wish that was my experience but it wasn't and I, for whatever reasons, felt like writing about it. If you want to leave your counter experience by all means please do. Just please don't be rude about it. Thanks much and Cheers!

8 comments:

Taster B said...

Well, I just wish I had gone looking for sites like this BEFORE I ordered from IKEA.

They shipped me the wrong boxes (which don't go together I might add) and after multiple attempts at getting them to ship the right part, I've pretty much given up them ever fixing this.

I've basically spent over $250 including shipping on some useless bits of particle board that I now have to haul to the dump.

They took my money and didn't deliver the merchandise.

Anonymous said...

IKEA’s ‘Lack’: Lack of quality and just simply sucks @ DesignFail.org blog:
http://designfail.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/ikeas-lack-lack-of-quality-and-just-sucks/

Anonymous said...

honestly i am an ikea employee, and i would never order from online, not because it's ikea but because ordering furniture online seems pretty weird, anyways the reality is ikea is cheap, and you get what you pay for, you could always pay triple for the similar piece of furniture somewhere else, but you don't. so live with your choices in life, just deal with it. if you wanted ikea to have tons of smiling faces helping you in store or over the phone prices would sky rocket and then you wouldn't shop there, i have learned by working there and shopping there that if you want to be an ikea customer you need to learn to be patient. our motto is if the customer gives a little, and we give a little together we can save a lot. but customers believe that they need all the attention all the time, and in this world that comes with a price. it's like shopping at Target and Nordstrom, at Target you can't find anyone to help you but stuff is cheap, at Nordstrom you have to beat coworkers off with a stick, and the price reflects it. anyways good luck shopping and it's hard being no. 1, it's lonely at the top.......

Anonymous said...

i have never had a problem with ikea myself, but all i can say is that you get what you pay for i guess

Doorman said...

I once had nothing but respect and admiration for IKEA, due to their design strategies as well as social policies and interesting marketing. But that changed in July when I visited their West Chester, Ohio store and found out that customer service is merely a myth in their philosophy and mission.

My wife and I intended to get some new cabinets, sinks, and accessories for our bathrooms and chose IKEA for its interesting designs and relatively inexpensive prices. While we placed our order, the store associate assured us about twenty times that the cabinets were the "birch" color. Of course when we returned home to Indianapolis, we opened the boxes to find white frames and birch doors. Mistakes happen, or so we thought.

We tried for several days to get something besides an automated menu on the phone. Back in the good ole days, we called those things "people" or "employees". You may call them something else in your part of the country, but that's not important right now. Finally, after about a week of trying, my wife reached one of these aforementioned "people"/"employees" who apologized for our plight - until she talked to one of her managers at the West Chester store. At that point, the employee returned to the phone and informed my wife that - despite the poorly-trained sales associate's repeated assurances - that our order only came in white and that what happened at the store was our fault. The employees then said we would have to come back to the store and return the items ourselves - there was nothing she could do.

Well, I was tired of the stonewalling from IKEA, so I filed a Better Business Bureau (BBB) complaint and recited the facts of our problem. Sure enough, I soon received an email from West Chester's "after sales" manager, who was effusively apologetic for our inconvenience. He offered me two options: (1) We could return to the store and get a refund and a gasoline stipend; or (2) he would send a delivery truck to us to pick up the items and process the return at the store when they arrived. Since we are not local to Cincinnati - we live north of Indianapolis - we of course chose the latter. Whew! problem solved - or so I thought.

Later we received a call from someone else at the store (not the after sales manager) negating his offer.

I then filed a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General's office in their Consumer Protection Division. Being an attorney myself and having once worked in the Indiana A.G.'s office, I was familiar with such things and figured that would at least light a fire under IKEA.

I heard nothing back from the store, so I looked up the number for IKEA's North American headquarters in Conshohocken, PA. They connected me to someone else at the West Chester store, with whom I impatiently "discussed" the situation. I essentially told her that she could skip the pleasantries and find someone who had the authority to follow through with offers and promises made to customers rather than the appeasement policies which are apparently in the new employees' training manuals. After another half hour on hold, she came back finally and told me she had arranged for their assembly service to pick up the items. She gave me the driver's name and date (today, Sept. 15) and told me he would call to set up a time for pickup. Of course yesterday I had still not heard from the driver, so I called back to track him down. Originally, the first IKEA operator gave me the wrong company, so when called them, there was nobody there "by that name." Fortunately, the second IKEA oerator noticed the error and gave me the driver's personal number. I called him, and he verified that nobody told him to call me but that he had my name/cmplaint, etc. We then arranged a pickup time. The driver actually showed up when he said he would and took the offending items from our house and I received confirmation that they were back in the store this afternoon.

In the mean time, the "after sales" manager responded to the A.G. representative, declaring the case "closed" and stated that we had been "unwilling" to come back to the store, thereby omitting the fact that he also offered to have a driver come and pick them up. He also stated that he was more than fair because he intended to give us a full refund for the items even after spending $250 to have a driver pick them up.

Well, I replied and reminded him that he did offer to pick up the items, that we spent $1100 and are only returning about half of our purchase - what they screwed up (except for the office chair that has already broken and been placed in the trash).

I guess the subtext is that we are not a multibillion dollar multinational corporation that can make $250 at any cash register at any store in the blink of an eye - they are. The time and money we spent in just trying to get them to correct their ADMITTED mistake would certainly be worth more than $250 if we had charged them for it.

In that sense, we see this more as an issue of principle, whereas IKEA clearly sees this (and their customers in my opinion) as a matter of money.

As soon as we receive our refund, we can be rid of IKEA. What a glorious day that will be.

Doorman

Anonymous said...

I thought I would post my comments. It has been years since I have been to IKEA. It's expanded like a politicians waist line. I could not believe how huge it is. Me and my wife went to look at cabinets for our laundry room. Of course they did not have any of the options we wanted, not Ikeas fault unless they want to make a profit. We did opt to purchase the color they had. We also placed our children into the play area, which took about 15min to get them in. They give you one of those vibrating drink coasters to carry around, which apparently does not work for the size of the facility. Well at the hour mark we were still trying to find the items listed on the form they printed for us. Some were wrong. After pulling a box exceeding probably 100lbs off the shelf and placing it onto the cart, the box bent slightly damaging the edge. I grabbed another box and about 10 more parts boxes later I decided that real wood cabinets would not only be lighter, but last a lot longer. I told me wife this was a joke and remembered why we don't buy IKEA stuff anymore. Wish I would have told my wife sooner since she was just trying to save money. Needless to say the cost of the cabinets adds up quickly and is really not that cheap for particle board furniture.

Hijack Your Life said...

I went to Ikea last sunday, bought a bunch of stuff, and wanted to get it delivered to my place the following day. The same night they called at nine o clock, saying they were outside my door. I wasn´t there, that was why I told them to deliver I the day AFTER.

The following day they simply didn´t show up. I tried calling them, which turned out to be impossible from a cellphone. Not allowed. I tried calling with skype, since I didn´t have access to a landline, which wasn´t possible either. Then I tried their online chat service. The link didn´t work. Tried to email them. Link. Didn´t. Work.

The next day I called from a fixed phone, got some new number to call and finally got to talk to the right place. They had absolutely no clue where my stuff was, what happened to the delivery, or anything at all. The order didn´t even have a separate number, so they couldn´t track it, they were completely useless. They said they would look for it and call me back. Which they didn´t do. When I called back they actually took the call and emediately hung up, before saying anything. This went on for some time, until I finally got hold of someone, who again told me they would search for it, and call me back. Never happened. I called back, they hung up. Etc. Etc.

€300 worth of stuff is now lost someweher in Amsterdam, probably laying in the back of some idiots delivery van. Tomorrow I will give them hell. I´m Swedish, I want to like Ikea, but fuck it, they suck ass.

Unknown said...

Go on man, You`re doing a great job with this blog, IKEA sucks indeed and people must now about that, I`ll share my first experience with the furniture I bought from them.

a month ago I moved to a new place and I thought of going to buy my office furniture from ikea and this is what I did. I bought a desk and a chair from them. Now after a month of using this desk and this fucking chair I can say that Ikeea products sucks. I will never buy from them ever again. the chair is so bad that in it`s shape you can`t have a confortable position while working and you always have the sensation you`re sliding down from it. this one, http://homestars.com/uploaded_images/0000/0505/Ikea_-_Karsten_Swivel_Chair_medium.jpg don`t buy it it`s a shit ! and the desk doesn`t have the right height to fit well with the chair and this feels uncomfortable when I work. Now I have to go shopping again and buy other ones cause these are impossible to use. my last word is, don`t waste your money buying shit from IKEA.