IKEA — Attraction in Renton

Ordered from IKEA online hoping to furnish my new apartment with a nice new couch. I had visited the IKEA store in Renton to get an idea of the type of sofa I would like to have. While I could sing the praises of the Renton IKEA, I do take issue with IKEA delivery, time of arrival, customer service, ability to contact and resolve issues, outsourcing delivery to a third-party company who mismanage items, along with several other issues.

Last week I ordered the Friheten Sleeper Sectional with Chaise. My delivery window was set and I was set to receive the order a week later. The day before my delivery I was given an 11:00am-3:00pm window. This did not end up being the case. At around 4:30pm (mind you, I have left work temporarily to receive the order expecting I would be able to make it back into the office) I call IKEA to check the status of my order where I am THEN told that I will not be receiving my order until 5:00pm-7:00pm. This would have been a wonderful window if in-fact I had not be expecting the previous one.

Fast-Forward to 7:40 when my packages finally arrive. They are in the back of a rental Enterprise truck driven by two individuals who are telling me they've been so pressed to deliver things on-time that they have not eaten lunch! I am a few hours away from going to bed and these guys haven't eaten. The back of this truck, and my packages with them, are in shambles with piles of cardboard, binding, and miscellaneous packaging material strewn about. Getting them to my front door was difficult enough.

After signing the paperwork without getting a chance to look inside the packages, the men and their truck depart. I begin to open the packages around 8:10pm hoping to get a jump on putting things together. First box, fine. Second Box, surprisingly fine. But upon opening the third box, I find a chaises with a deep crack in the supporting structure under the cushion. On the short side, another crack, twice as large that had dislodged a piece of the wood. A large chunk of wood hung in the bag as I let out a deep exhale that summed up how this disastrous day had gone.

After realizing the customer service line had closed, I filed an online report which said I should be receiving a call within 24-48 hours. Not trusting that, as soon as I got into my office this morning, I began calling the line. Every time I called (roughly 10x if not more) I would be walked through steps by an automated message that would ultimately hang up on me because of high call volume or because the department I was looking for (during business hours) could not be reached. BUT, after saying that I was a business calling, I was able to get through to a rep who then, in no more than 2 minutes, was able to transfer me to a customer service representative who managed my claim only to tell me that I have to wait ANOTHER WEEK for a single piece of my product to be reshipped to me.

I do not expect that I would get any perks or special benefits from calling in, but in the event of a catastrophic series of events like this, the expediency with which a company ought to act should be more responsive than this. At this least, covering expedited shipping or some sort of compensation should be made. I paid for a certain product within a certain window, was made to pay for the delivery charge of that product, and then was not met with either one of the things I had paid for in the capacity with which I SHOULD expect them to arrive in.

I would recommend IKEA for a lot of things, but if you are someone who doesn't have time to jump through these hoops, I would suggest either ordering from a different site/company, going into a store and making sure that you are able to get the product then and there, but most of all, avoiding dealing with IKEA from online. They are completely unresponsive/impossible to get in...

We had our first in-store IKEA experience yesterday (06/30). As such we opted for the full experience given the long-hyped meatballs. So our first stop was the food court.

The food: 0) 8 non-vegetarian meatball plate w/gravy and no jam. The meatballs were "meh" - bagged brand(s) offered at Costco are markedly superior. The vegetable medley tasted like it came straight out of a can/low quality frozen bag. Bottom of the barrel Veg-ALL or something. tl;dr - Actively not good. Mashed potatoes weren't special but were the best thing of the composed menu offering, flavor-wise. Gravy was inert to merely ok.

1. A slice of the garlic toast. Quite possibly the best thing they make/offer. If they had even a half-decent Buffet style spaghetti, that would be the attraction.

2. Chocolate cake slice. It was ok flavor-wise. For the size of the slice and price $5.49, it was a trash. My wife thought it was good but not as good as the Apple cake. My 9yo boy really liked it and ate the bulk of it.

3. Apple cake. This was actually very good. It was less than half the price of the chocolate cake and roughly the same size but given it's density perhaps overall qty was =. But flavor-wise, it was orders of magnitude better. My wife also really like this.

4. Cod plate My wife got this. I tried it and think it's better than the meatballs. She didn't really like it. Overall she didn't really eat much of anything on the plate because it "just wasn't very good." Similarly awful vegetable medley as that of the meatball plate. she didn't find the potatoes all that special either.

5. chicken strip plate w/fries 9yo and 5yo boys split this. Both liked it quite a bit. They ate all of the chicken and most of the fries.

We had water...glasses not bottled. The total cost was just under $45.

The line for their endeavor was long, getting a tray cart proved difficult, and the cost for the quality of the food was absolutely horrendous! Would have been infinitely better food anywhere else. The food did not even manage bad buffet quality. It also did not help that I was suffering some epic heartburn about half an hour after. It was brutal!

The rest of the IKEA experience was interesting/worthy. The wait to get a vanity fulfilled at the end was unexpected but manageable.

The one negative experience was the checkout. This could have been a mix of policy and/or cashier. She seemed a souless dr01d unable/unwilling to deviate from some long-worn/ingrained brainwashing. We had pulled one of the plastic in/over-sink straddling strainers from the box/pile of them. Apparently it had a/the magic tag that it was the display unit and rather than a) ask that a sellable regular one be brought forward or b) remove the magic tag, ring it through, and perform whatever dark rite may be required to annoint another strainer as the display unit she just kept saying, "I can't sell it." in as monotonous a tone as any human can manage. Is there some contractural aspect of becoming an IKEA employee that involves forfeiture of one's soul/faculties?

So I was denied the actual thing I had some excitement over discovering. You know, finding a thing you didn't even consider you wanted/needed.

$1248 later my wife waited for the vanity fulfillment while I took the boys and loaded up the R1T and the boys and pulled around to the exit loading area.

Got the vanity, loaded it, and we left.

Overall: Stay away unless you need a specific thing that day. In all other circumstances, you'll be happier just ordering it online and having it delivered. The food is overpriced trash not worthy of...

The store is well laid out and easy to follow. The issue I have is with the way this store specifically handled my return. I don’t typically carry my entire wallet with me as I hate carrying a purse so I just take the essentials. At any other store I’ve made a return to in recent memory, not having the card I used to purchase wasn’t a big deal as the system was able to process without it. Just check the ID to make sure I’m me and bing bang boom I’m out the door. Not at IKEA apparently.

The woman who helped me return was definitely already over her shift and was a bit short and borderline rude. I processed my return using the Express Return option through the app and when I told her as much, she responded with, “ugh, that takes a lot longer for me because now I have to count all your stuff. It would’ve been faster to just let me do it.” Ummm….okay, sorry?

When I told her it can just go back on the card I used to make the purchase, she asked for the card, which I thought was weird because she had already asked for my ID. When I told her I didn’t have it and tried to provide an explanation I immediately get cut off and told, “Well we’re not other stores.” Cool….noted. I understand that she probably has this conversation about 10x a day, but this was new to me. The app made no indication that I needed anything other than the barcode it sent me, nor did it state I needed it in the email I received confirming my return request. So her attitude was quite off putting and I remained silent until directly spoken to as to not cause additional frustration on both our parts.

She then processed the return onto a gift card and told me to call to have a “tender swap.” Which I appreciated because I really did not want to have to make another trip down. I confirmed twice with her that I would not need to come back to the store to do this, and she confirmed both times that yes, just call and tell them to do a tender swap and they can take care of it. Surprise!! When I called IKEA when I got home I was told that they could not take personal information over the phone and that I would need to go back into the store to get it processed.

So now I have to make another trip to get the funds transferred back to my original credit card all because a giant, multinational corporation can’t process a return onto a card without it physically being present. I’ve had Nordstrom’s able to. Target has been able to. Why can’t IKEA? Especially for app users, why is there not an option to save a payment method within the app?

I understand that I should have had the foresight to bring it with me, but I honestly didn’t even think about it because of my previous experiences at the other stores and just not carrying a whole wallet. But I’m docking the star because of the lack of customer service and accurate...