Devoted to customer service and the principles of exceptional customer services

Maria, thanks for the link to a great article on Ikea - here is my favorite passage: "Every Ikea product has to pass through the so-called wash council, a committee that asks whether the product makes sense and meets a need, said Anna Rosenqvist, an Ikea sofa designer. "It's about the product and the business. Why should we have it?" she said. "Never mind price. It doesn't matter if it doesn't look good."

So simple, but so true, at any price! Thanks again.

You are kidding, right? Have you ever shopped at IKEA? They are about as customer hostile as retail gets. The stores are intentionally difficult to navigate. The product on the floor is frequently discontinued our out of stock. You have to go to the warehouse and grab everything yourself -- made even trickier by the fact things are poorly or incorrectly labeled, and many are too heavy for the average customer to lift. You have to carry your furniture to a separate desk for home delivery after you pay for it. Not all things are available in the warehouse -- some the info desk needs to get for you. However, often, the product numbers have changed and they cannot sell you an item under the new number while the old number is in the computer (even if the item is the same and inventory says there are 0 of the old and a dozen of the new in stock).

You could try and order online, but things aren't generally available on line. You could call and try and order from the catalog, but they only carry about 80% of what you saw in the store and frequently they do not sell items in the size or colors they are available in the store (one example, the store sells desks in beech that the catalog lists but you cannot buy by phone; bookcases are available in 24" sizes at the store but not by mail-order despite being in the catalog).

I could go on and on... But the point is that IKEA has a stone-age inventory management and really poorly thought-out stores and policies that make them impossible to deal with. It's a shame too, some of the furniture does look good -- but it's only for display, you can't actually buy it.