IKEA STORES
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As an employee of the call centre I have never experienced such poor communication and customer service in my entire working life. I have on numerous times been upset and distressed due to the lack of help i am able to give customers. I am now seeking alternative employment.
Anon...4 December 2002
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I fought with IKEA for nearly a year over a defective sofa. They refused to have someone inspect the piece of junk and gave me the runaround. I logged every phone call I had with them and it ended up being 8 pages long. I finally took them to small claims court and won! If you want any resolution with them, you have to push them against a wall. SUE THEM! It works. Maybe if they get enough judgements against them, they'll learn. Ah, wishful thinking.
CD...18 January2003
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Ikeas design is great, the average quality is very good and apart from a couple of poor manufacturing quality issues, unclear instructions and missing screws my biggest complaint is the obvious contempt they have for their customers.

I have seen their customers seriously distressed in their stores because of sheer frustration. I appreciate that they have many thousands of people shopping at Ikea everyday, I know this because Ikea horror stories are a well known dinner conversation nowadays. My only consolation is that they are hurting themselves more by destroying their own, hard worked for brand by turning many thousands of people against them so when a competitor eventualy does come along because they see the gap in the market for a caring service, they will lose a huge chunk of their business.

I would be really worried if I worked for or had shares in Ikea and would press to change the incompetent management they have.
Tony Kenton....5 February 2003
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I went to ikea, opened an ikea account card, purchased sofa to be delivered 28th feb-ish, and some other stuff,delivery turned up with just frames, rung ikea they said the delivery company lost the cushions, when questioned delivery men they laughed and said 'good luck' with getting the rest of sofa, 1 week later 1 set of matteresses delivered as delivery man in front room ikea rang to say that they had just ordered 2 new sets of matteresses, told them i only needed 1, when i went to put covers on one was faulty so i rang ikea, she said she would send me an extra set of covers as 'goodwill' and freze my account so i did not have to pay until all goods had been delivered, so i was pleased and awaited my sofa, then ikea card services sent me a bill with £20 interest, so i rang them to explain that my account was frozen (21st march) and the girl said 'ok i'll freze your account the other girl at ikea stores cannot do that, i will charge the interest back to ikea or i will write it off', so i carried on waiting for my sofa, then on the 25th march i get a phone call from a girl named 'r' who may as well have been called polly as she kept repeating the same thing over and over, 'ikea is a seperate company from ourselves' 'you owe us money because you bought furniture on 29th jan.........' even though i told her the story she kept on repeating herself, not much help.

she said she would get the manager to ring me in the morning. D..... the manager what can i say, when i was in the middle of explaining what the situation around me not paying she said, 'well..whatever you still have to pay sumthin' by the 13th of april' not customer services at it's best, then when i told her what the previous person said about the interest she said, 'well i'll take it off this time 'cos some one told you the wrong thing' this made it sound like i was trying to get a bargin, then she said about hte other things that i had bought and said that i was expected to pay for the £65 worth of goods that i had in my possesion, i said that i thought that the account was frozen and she said, 'you didn't expect to get them for free did you?'

I was taken aback and informed her that these things were gifts and i actually had the money to pay off the whole card but i was waiting for delivery of all the goods first and that if someone had explained that i needed to pay for the other goods i would have done. but in which case the intrest charged would not be as high, in the end she agreed to remove the intrest but not before making me feel like some cheapskate criminal.

I later spoke to a very nice lady called marilyn at ikea customer services in peterborough (although i was supposed to be speaking to the manager of thurrock as that is what the advisor said that he was putting me through to.) and she was very helpful and found out exactly what was going on with the delivery of my sofa so this is about ikea card services not ikea in general.
CARLY ROBERTS...27 March 2003
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IKEA sold us a kitchen. They did not tell us that the following would happen:

Excel messed up delivery. Sent it to the wrong house and then did not bother to call to find out what was going on. We tried to find out why they did not deliver it and they seemed to think it was our fault for some reason. Eventually got damaged kitchen.

When we purchased the kitchen, we were told that appliance fittings for integrated units were standard size. This was not the case for the fridge freezer cabinet. We went back to IKEA to buy one of their fridge freezers to fit it and discovered that they do not do a fridge freezer that fits the cabinet they sell. We eventually purchased a new cupboard for the fridge freezer and a new fridge freezer and cooker unit. This was sold to us at a discount because of the problems.

IKEA's delivery company, Excel demanded a disclaimer before they would deliver. They said they refused to guarantee the condition of the items. We were gobsmacked.

Eventually,after a great deal of stress and distress and nearly 5 hours later, our stuff was delivered by their in house cab company. What a nightmare. We are still waiting for a reply to our original complaint letter about the delivery. They have not had the courtesy to reply. CK... 12 May 2003
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After waiting in from 6.45 am on 11th Oct for a delivery slot for a consignment of bedroom furniture due between 7am and 3 pm the delivery did not arrive.When I rang the office I was told in mumbled tones that it was booked for the 6th.although my confirmed and printed paperwork clearly showed Saturday the 11th.They were then going to phone me with an answer,this did not arrive so I phoned the manager who promised that as I lived just over a mile from the store it would be with me within 1 hour only for him to phone up about one hour later that the promised delivery would not in fact take place and they could only deliver on a weekday which I cannot accept.By now it was 5pm and we'd all sat around for most of the day waiting for Ikea/Exel.As I live on the fourth floor of an old mansion block with no lift I had laid on sufficient help to get the product and the 6 flights of stairs and assemble them once in the flat.

After returning home my partner rang and spoke to Mr V and told him once again that his company had let us down so badly and what was he going to do about it.Once again he mumbled something about the goods being on the van and that when he had spoken to the driver he would ring us back.

So we waited like fools and we were not wrong,once again we had been fooled.
Suffice it to say ,I will never buy any major item again from IKEA that has to be delivered,its just not worth the aggravation compare this motley lot to the service enjoyed from John Lewis,Tesco,Sainsburys etc,they are not in the same league,never again. M Leaver .. 11 October 2003
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I reported a major fault on my Indesit Tumble Drier (bought inadvisably from the incompetent Currys in January) on 6th November. I was booked a call for 18th November. No show. I rearranged for 2nd December - no show. I rearranged for 5th December - engineer called - minor part - he did not have one on his van. Could do 11th December - not convenient - but had to like it or lump it. Cancelled important meetings to be here after been told take this appointment or do without. No show. My advice - buy an appliance from a reputable company - avoid Hotpoint Indesit (and Currys) like the plague - They are lying crooks. Peter Munro... Congleton 11December 2003



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