an Ikea nightmare!

Having just bought a house for the first time, we had the joy of trekking up to Ikea in Croydon to pur-chase massive amounts of cheap flat pack to populate our new home with nice looking furniture.

The thing I love (read: hate) about Ikea is the way you have to go through the entire maze every time you go. A maze of aisles with no way to get to the exit other than to go back or all the way to the end.

Anyways - we went through, selecting what we wanted, jotting down the location in the self-service wareouse with the little Ikea pencils and shopping list sheet.

So we get to the end, grab a trolley ready to load up, and about 80% of what we want is out of stock - fannytastic!

My girlfriend and I head back, to try and find alternatives, most also out of stock, so we then have to go more expensive, much more expensive, double the price infact! Wonder if they do this on purpose.

We later decide to go back as we need a sofa bed as we have a guest coming to stay. We call in to make sure they have some in stock, we check on the Internet and by phone - they do!

Off we trot, we get there, speak to an employee there, they have 3 left she tells us, which most likely means they have zilcho, as they have more than likely been taken off the shelf. So we are there, in the middle of the maze, and have no other choice but to follow it all the way back to go check. It was out. Back we go for an alternative.

The single sofa bed version, we will get two of those, so we write the numbers on out little pad with our little pencil, choose the colour we want and down we go. The bed is there, the mattress is there, the colour isn’t. Our second choice colour isn’t either. We pick up a blue version which is quite nice, run it to the till for a price check - Sixty Quid!! when the others range from 7.50 - 20 quid. I’m thinking again do they do this on purpose.

Funny thing is you know every other person in there is in the same boat. Heard people muttering “Have they ever heard of stock control”, and people complaining about the maze like layout.

Sod them we decide to grab the cheap ones and get some throws - only for the spare room!! :-)

We buy those and go back, buy some other furniture, (which we have now put together and is all wonky - cheers Ikea) and have some food. One thing you notice when you go to Ikea is the happy-go-lucky staff I do not think. I don’t think you could find a more miserable bunch of peeps if you tried. My girlfriend and I decided we will never go back.