My IKEA Experience

Happened to spend a couple of hours yesterday at the spiffy IKEA in Paramus and what an experience it was! My daughter, of course, loves the game room, where she can play for over an hour! And, yes, some of their stuff is pretty, darn cool. (BTW, check out Jonathan Coulton's song “IKEA” at Experience Manifesto: Jonathan Coulton Songs. It's a hoot!)

So, we're buying stuff for our new office and I had quite a lot of fun spending some $2,000 there. Some new desks, chairs and the like. Then we go to have it delivered to our offices so I can have it there on Monday evening, when I'm teaching a class from NYU on event marketing. Thought it would be rude not to at least have chairs when they get there!

So, I'm working with Iliana from the home delivery department and we can't figure out what's wrong. She's reading off the receipt and counting 42 boxes, but we're only counting 41 boxes on our carts. Only at IKEA would a full office for five people fit onto 2 carts! We keep going back & forth, counting and recounting and not finding our problem. By this time, about 9 PM, my 3 1/2 daughter is pretty much on her last legs and that's taking a toll on my wife, who is also getting close to being on her last legs. After lots of work, Iliana and I find the problem. There's an extra box on the receipt, but we didn't really buy that item. So, off I go to speak to a manager to get it refunded.

Now, it turns out that the person I asked was the Duty Manager, whose name I don't remember. I told him what happened and his response was "Our cashiers wouldn't make a mistake, so you must have taken it." Now, I'm paraphrasing here, but that was the gist of what he said. Actually, he later said "I can only take your word for it, but how do I know that you didn't take the box out to your car already and are trying to not pay for it?" I was shocked! No, actually I was damned pissed off. I mean, we all know that the IKEA shopping experience isn't always the easiest and, boy, you sure have to do a lot of work yourself, but accusing a guest of stealing? This was a new low!

I explained to him that I had just spent $2,000 and didn't it seem a little odd that I would be trying to steal one thing for $39.99, but he wouldn't have anything of that explanation. He made me wait quite a long time while he spoke to another manager about what a thief I was and how his cashiers would never make a mistake like this.

Now, to be fair to the cashier, we had three carts full plus a 3 1/2 year old, so check out was a little crazed. And I would just tell her "we have 5 of those" and she would scan one and then multiply it by 5. I thought that I was making it easier for her, but apparently I was mistaken.

So, after a good 30 minutes, I was back online at customer service, waiting to get my refund, when Iliana came back over with yet another problem with my receipt. It seems that the receipt list 10 chairs when, in fact, I had 5 pairs of chairs in different colors. Yet another mistake made by the cashier and once again, the Duty Manager blamed me saying that I should never tell them how many of something I have on the cart. They will do the counting and that way I won't have this problem again. So, once again, I waited while they re-did my receipt to make sure that it showed the proper inventory control.

Now, I know that mistakes happen and frankly, who cares. But having this Duty Manager basically tell me I was a thief; make me wait while he discusses my thieving ways with another manager and then make me wait some more to fix other problems that he also blamed on me, well, that's just crappy. I guess I should have had him just refund the entire order, but that would have been spiteful. Plus, I really like the furniture I was buying!

So, instead, like all good bloggers, I'll just share my bad experience with all of our readers! People who shop at IKEA go through a lot to buy their goods, we shouldn't have to be called thieves and liars to our faces. We shouldn't have to be told that it's our fault a cashier made a mistake and did something that would screw up their inventory. That's just creating a really bad experience for which there is no excuse. People who just spent $2,000 don't like to be made to feel like thieves over a $39.99 cashiers mistake. To quote a line from Paul Sills' Story Theatre, "It's not right. It's just not right."