Finally got my my refund from IKEA Conshohocken

[giza]

Like the subject says, after:

• Two phonecalls, one unreturned voicemail, and 1 email to IKEA,
  
• Two letters to the BBB,
  
• One phonecall and two letters to my credit card company,
  
• And one letter to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Bureau of Consumer Protection

...I finally got my refund of $359.34 from these people. For a purchase made in August.

Man, what a bunch of jackasses they were. I had to go to ALL this trouble just to get a coherent response out of them. I think it was the Attorney General's Office that finally got their attention, since they are the only entity that can actually bring legal action and hence, you don't want to do anything to get on their bad side. :-)

I think I'll go back to buying my furniture from K-Mart and Staples. I never had this level of problems from them.

Comments

[thraxarious.livejournal.com]

*missed where you had trouble with Ikea*

Erf?

[giza.livejournal.com]

I didn't discuss it here before. I figured it'd be more helpful to work toward a solution in private than bitch about it in public.

But now that it's all over, I figured I would post the abridged version of my story. Actually, I should include my contact with IKEA, too. *edits post*

[elfasi.livejournal.com]

So what happened with Ikea that led to this problem?

[giza.livejournal.com]

I bought a desk from them. It consisted of 3 parts: the desktop, the frame, the legs.

The instructions had no words whatsoever, just pictures of attaching the legs to the frame and then the frame to the desk. Not only did it not specify that it had to happen in that order, it failed to indicate AT ALL that if you attached the frame to the desk first (as I did by mistake), you would be IRREVOCABLY SCREWED. For real. It turned out that the screws that held the frame to the desk go into threadless plastic sheaths. One you put the screws in, you cannot take them out again. And the bolts that attach the legs to the frame go in on the top of the frame. So I stuck with a half-assembled desk. I tried calling and email IKEA about it, and got the runaround.

As I see it, there were two issues with the desk here:

1) The instructions did not indicate in BIG RED LETTERS that if you attached one piece before attaching the other, you could not finish assembling the desk. That's very bad documentation/UI.

2) The desk itself would not let you remove the screws after putting them in. This made it impossible to "recover" from that mistake. That just... makes no sense at all. I've bought furniture from K-Mart that did not have this problem.

Add in the lack of being able to talk to a clueful human at IKEA, and you got the Unholy Trinity of furniture assembly experiences. Everytime I called them, their response was the mantra "bring it back to the store" over and over. When I mentioned, "I have a small car and would have to rent a van. Can we just discuss this over the phone?", all they did was repeat that without even acknowledging my question. They even had the gall to say this to the BBB. I was just floored that they could be that clueless/unhelpful.

*pants* Does that answer your question? :-)

[kovucougar.livejournal.com]

You'll never see actual letters on Ikea directions. They took the route of the whole language-neutral pictoral directions. I've never actually had a problem with them. I just start at page 1 and follow step by step.

Page 1 is generally the first page where a book would open from the right hand side when it is oriented upwards ;)

Seriously though, Ikea directions, while occasionally being a touch annoying due to their lack of words, are often comprehensive enough with the pictures to figure out. I'm surprised the instructions for whatever desk you bough didn't even have numbers on it though to show which step was which. I'd be interested in seeing these directions.

I think you just got a dud store down where you live CS wise. Though they also offer a return service. I don't know how much they'd charge for that there though. I just make sure to keep at least on friend on hand with a truck *G*

[giza.livejournal.com]

Ah, but since my desk was a "modular" desk, the book had about two dozen pages. Exactly ONE of them corresponded to me, which was page 8. I had to figure this out by flipping through the pages and playing tetris with the desk pieces in my head.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

"language-neutral pictoral directions"

This makes more sense for Lego sets than for something as difficult and error-intolerant as assembling a table, it seems to me.

[danruk.livejournal.com]

That's a bit of a shame. IKEA's been great up here in the Toronto area, with no problems whatsoever. Even with a piece once where it was a 'discontinued' item on sale, and one of the glass shelves wasn't cut to fit right, the customer service refunded a portion so we could get a proper glass shelf cut from a glass place.

[mindslide.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, you really wern't kidding in my IKEA thread, were you Doug?

[giza.livejournal.com]

Definitely not. Trying to deal with those people was like talking to a wall. Except walls are usually more interesting to look at.

These people wouldn't know what "service after the sale" meant if it bit them on the arse.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

initially, I misparsed that as "IKEA in Cockblocken"...

or something.

There was definitely cock involved.

[khakiwolf.livejournal.com]

Man, what a bunch of jackasses they were. I had to go to ALL this trouble just to get a coherent response out of them.

Well they ARE from Sweden.

[giza.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're joking, but I don't even get the joke. Did I miss something?

[khakiwolf.livejournal.com]

I was just fooling around with you. You mentioned getting a "coherent" answer from them, and the guy in the commercials always has such a weird Swedish accent.

Meh nevermind, I think I've lost my own joke. =P