How IKEA Could Win Me Back
When I ordered two mattresses from IKEA this July for $375, I expected to receive the delivery in a week or so. What I got instead was two months of frustration.
The trouble began when XPO Logistics, the company that IKEA has hired for deliveries in the New York area, called to say that they would deliver the mattresses on a Friday. I stayed home from work for the day, waiting: no mattresses. The next day I called XPO to reschedule the delivery, but strangely they demanded that I call IKEA instead. IKEA could not be reached at all. Their customer service phone number said “all circuits are busy” continuously, and IKEA did not respond to emails, tweets, or Facebook messages.
So I waited. IKEA had my $375, and I had no mattresses and no information. Would my order be delivered tomorrow, next year, never? I didn’t know, and I couldn’t find out.
I week later XPO Logistics called again to tell me they would deliver the mattresses on a Saturday. I stayed in my apartment for the day, looking forward to getting my mattresses and ending the matter. But by 10 pm I had despaired. Again, no mattresses. Again, I tried to call IKEA (“all circuits are busy”) and sent them messages every way I could think of. I visited their Facebook page, where I saw posts from hundreds of their customers, demanding to know where their deliveries were. Here, amid the misery of my fellow-sufferers, I glimpsed a spot of light: a post from No No No, inviting me to file a complaint.
It took the No No No team a month of effort, but they managed to reach a human being at IKEA who refunded my $375. Remarkably, No No No advocated for me for free, and they achieved what I couldn’t: they got IKEA’s attention. The IKEA employee wrote, “I am sorry to report that there is a delay in your area currently due to an unexpected increase in orders.” It took him another month after his first response to actually refund my order, but this September my tribulation ended: I saw the money back in my bank account and I could stop worrying about IKEA forever.
Meanwhile, I ordered mattresses from Amazon, which delivered them in a few days without fuss.
It’s remarkable how much suffering a corporation causes when they mistreat a customer this way. I wasn’t physically harmed and the amount of money wasn’t very much, but while I was fighting with IKEA, I had trouble sleeping. I thought about them every day. I felt helpless and desperate. I wondered if I’d been foolish to order from them. I questioned whether I was a real adult; maybe the mistake I’d made by trusting IKEA proved that I haven’t really grown up.
I expect I’ll always be a little angry at IKEA. I’ll certainly never risk purchasing something from them for delivery again, and I will warn everyone I know not to rely on IKEA. It appears that their customer service, and their policy of outsourcing delivery service to unreliable trucking companies, is in such terrible shape that it cannot ever be fixed.
To be a satisfied IKEA customer I’d need them to acknowledge how spectacularly broken their systems are:
1. The phone number listed on their “Contact Us” page said “all circuits are busy” for weeks. I never reached an IKEA employee that way.
2. I filled out the form on their “Contact Us” page twice explaining my problem. That page says, “We strive to respond within 48–72 hours.” I got no response. When the IKEA employee finally emailed me as a result of No No No’s intervention, he wrote “I was able to view your response from the general website,” so I know my message was recorded there. They just don’t respond to online requests unless No No No gives them a shove.
3. Any time IKEA tweets, angry customers reply demanding refunds or other responses from them, but IKEA rarely replies to them.
4. Any time they post an image on Facebook, dozens of people reply that their IKEA delivery is delayed and that IKEA customer service is unavailable. IKEA ignores them.
5. Globally, people are so frustrated they’re signing a petition for redress, by the thousands.
If IKEA writes to me saying, “Our phone lines are available and wait times are measured in minutes, our customer service staff are devoted to resolving customer’s issues, our deliveries are now on-time and reliable, and we answer all online requests within a day,” and if I stop seeing angry customers yell at them on Facebook and Twitter, I might consider trusting IKEA again.
Images:
Pietro Antonio Rotari, Portrait of a young girl hiding her eyes, 18th Century
George Elgar Hicks, Woman’s Mission, Companion of Manhood, 1863
Pompeo Botoni, The Appearance of the Angel to Hagar in the Desert, 1774
Ferdinand Hodler, Disappointed Soul, 1889
Jean Béraud, Après la Faute, c. 1885–90
