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Ikea sucks? 491,000 links can’t be wrong, right?

July 6, 2008

/files/2008/07/ikea.jpgType, ‘Ikea sucks’ into Google and see what sort of results you find.  This afternoon I was one of the hundreds of thousands of ‘haters’, until I started to think that maybe Ikea wasn’t designed for me in mind. Here is my story:

I spent two hours winding my way through our local Ikea megastore just outside of Dallas this afternoon.  We are expanding our offices and according to the building our new space will be ready next week (I am not holding my breath).  Anyway, I decided to grab a few desks, chairs, shelves, filing cabinets and couches to fill up the space.  Ug, I am not a big shopper, so a two hour investment of time filling out a little form with 40 stacking chairs, 10 club chairs, 16 desks, 6 shelves, 16 filing cabinets, 4 storage cabinets, 8 end tables, 4 couches and assorted other stuff was a complete nightmare for me. But, I finally finished and asked one of the attendents for help.  This is where it got ugly.

I figured that Ikea would have some sort of arrangement to allow me to buy the stuff and shedule a delivery.  Nope.  I would have to hand pick all items and carry them to the checkout area myself.  I thought the Ikea attendent was kidding.  Really?  The cart wouldn’t hold a single couch, much less four.  Where would I gather the stuff?  Much of it came in more than one flat box (up-to 8 boxes in some cases).  Really? Couldn’t you find someone to help me?  Surely there is a policy when someone is buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff.  Nope.

I was irked and left after I was told there were no managers on duty (they were in a managers meeting).  As I drove home, completely annoyed I realized that Ikea wasn’t wrong, they just weren’t trying to sell to me.  Ikea counts on quantity.  They want lots of small transactions.  Transactions where the buyer selects the items he wants without help, finds the items in the warehouse without help and carries the items out the door to his car without help.  If they can move the majority of their merchandise that way they make money by saving the cost of dealing with someone like me.  Someone who couldn’t possibly pick and carry all of the items I wanted to buy.

Moral of the story?  Sometimes the customer isn’t always right for the store.  Ikea isn’t right for me and as a result I won’t try to do my bulk shopping there anymore.  However, I did waste a lot of time selecting all of the stuff for our new space so my Mom has agreed to go in by herself and convince them to pick and carry my list for me.  I bet she will be successful.  Thankfully, I won’t have to go back!!!

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog, Personal 

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