ForLook Interior Design

Shopping at IKEA is getting more and more frustrating. Over the years I have shopped many times at many IKEA stores - both for design projects and for my own home. We even have a business account with them that should have made our life easier. But it hasn’t..

Last week I drove to Lakeside to pick up some units for an office project. I could have ordered them on the phone but we needed to install the design the next day. They didn’t have everything in stock so I had to drive to the Edmonton store. They had all the units in stock so I ordered them together with a couple of CD Towers that we had to pick up from the warehouse on our way to the tills.

The whole procedure of paying in store using the IKEA business card was just a joke. First I had to put money on the card from another credit card, then get an authorization code at customer services, with which I could finally pay at the tills.  

Then it turned out that the CD towers were out of stock in our chosen colour. By now I had paid for them so I had to choose another colour to fit within our design. Later on we decided not to compromise our design and called the Croydon store to check whether they had the CD towers in silver. They did. So we drove there too. By now it was 9pm. Returning them was another nightmare. Given that they were bought on a business account we had to get a credit note - but the new ones were not available directly in the warehouse and we had to wait for an hour and a half for someone to deliver them for us. We left the store at 11.30pm. 

I spent the whole day in IKEA stores - just unbelievable.

This was the first (and last!) time I used the business card in the store -previously I ordered things via the phone (and email, although they still don’t like using emails!) and everything was fine.

What I don’t get is, why don’t they employ more people for customer service? Also, why is IKEA not available online for shopping? It’s asking for it. They only need some warehouses and some high street showrooms - rather than this semi-self-pick system that is getting more and more inefficient. It seems that IKEA has not developed over time and is now unable to cope with its own popularity. They really need a total system rethink & revamp.