Today I've had it with IKEA. We used to be fans of their furniture, loved their lines: we even were sad to learn they were about to open a store in Tempe, AZ shortly after we moved out of there, and became happy again when they opened a store in Orlando, where we moved to next.
Upon settling in Palo Alto, it was obviously a cause of joy to see an IKEA store close to home. So most of the things we needed to furnish our new place (since we sold a lot of them before moving) we got there... little did we know how "cheap" some of these things would be.
Enter the
ÅNES bed frame. A couple of months after we got it, the headrest started showing
signs that it wasn't in good shape: we should have payed attention to the signs.
Less than three weeks ago, I was sitting on the side of the bed... to my susprise the feet-side of the frame collapsed, as you can see in the pic in here and
these others. I was, like... WHAT?
So, today we were finally able to go to IKEA in East Palo Alto. After waiting for an answer to an email I sent to
IKEA's "Customer Service" department, we took some pictures and printed them to show them at the returns desk.
First, we found to our surprise that the
ÅNES bed frame was no longer being offered in the store (it still is, as of the day of this post, available online -though I HIGHLY recommend you do NOT get it).
So we headed to the returns desk and talked to no avail to one of the customer service people. We ended up talking to Carsjanae (Cust. Service Supervisor #347 -I think this number corresponds to the store) who explained to us that without the receipt and after 90 days there was nothing she could do. Plus the case of the headrest seemed to her like wear and tear.
It was ironic how little she seemed to care about the whole situation as she kept talking about "they" and "their" policies, as if she weren't an IKEA employee but a person talking on behalf of another company she had nothing to do with. Unfortunately I wasn't able to convey to her (nor would she care about it) that their policies, even if they exist, are really not acceptable and have little consideration for cases like this, where it is obvious that the piece of furniture was not properly assembled.
Questions:
1) How could I reasonably expect to have a piece of furniture like a bed to go kaputt in six months?
2) They put it on the customer to hold on to a receipt, when we all know that they can easily look up the purchase if we hand them the credit card. They do that at Target and Costco.
3) So much "green" bluff in IKEA and the furniture they are putting out is utter waste that THEY know will not last long enough.
Well, I guess this post is my way to say: I give up... I will write to the a series of
IKEA execs (without much hope for a response, I have to say).
For what it's worth: we won't be shopping in IKEA any more... and I am writing this to you, to warn you in case you haven't been burned by this lame return ("warranty") policy...
