Dear Ikea,
I'm just going to say this to you straight, no beating around the bush. You suck and it's over.
Yep. That's right. I said it. I used to love you, but now I find you tedious and hateful. I'm afraid our relationship has to end. Sure, you have cute ideas and some smart storage solutions for small spaces - things that, in the beginning, I thought made us a perfect match. But I was wrong. Beneath your cute exterior lies shoddy craftsmanship, questionable manufacturing and labor practices and terrible customer service. Looks aren't everything in a relationship. I'm sorry I had to discover this fact the hard way, but now that I have, I just don't think we should see each other any more.
I put up with your abusive ways for far too long. The two story maze I had to navigate just to find the one lamp I needed, the 45 minute drive just to get to one of your stores, the time Allen had to go to three separate stores in a giant triangle around the DC metro area just to assemble a single desk... But the final straw was last weekend.
I found a bed frame I loved. I saw it in the store a few months ago and then stalked it online. Your stock is always fluctuating and never quite reliable, so I made sure to check online before we left to make sure the frame was "in stock". I had to wait several weeks. You know how to keep a girl dangling, Ikea. I'll give you that. I watched the stock go from "probably not in stock" with red bars, to "almost definitely in stock!" with five green bars! Five green bars, Ikea! It must be in the store! We drove down, expecting to buy our new bed frame and a whole new closet. We talked about sleeping on our new bed all the way down, we were that excited about it. We got to the store and decided on a color, then went to pick out our new closets.
This is where it started to fall apart, Ikea. First, you had some kind of high-wattage interrogation lights installed in the Pax closet section. I realize that I'm pregnant and a little sensitive to temperature changes, but even Allen was dying in there. We kept having to walk back to the mattress section for breaks because it was so unbearable. Then, we discovered that the tall shelves come in five colors, but the short ones only come in two colors. Whaaat?? We spent all that time picking out colors and accessories, only to have to start over when we realized that we could either get a kaleidoscope of closets (no) or settle for a color we didn't particularly want just for the sake of everything matching. I have a news flash for you, Ikea. Not everyone has even ceilings. Sometimes you have to mix and match heights, but it shouldn't mean you have to mix and match colors. But, like all abused partners, we "compromised" and rationalized our choice as being "better".
Once we had everything picked out and finalized, we went to the representative on the floor to pre-order our tall closets. You can't just pick those up at self-serve, oh no, you have to have the rep order it for you, print you out a receipt, pay for it and then you can pick it up from the furniture pick-up. She was moderately helpful, Ikea, but it only made us realize how terrible you had been to us overall. She checked the stock of all our closet accessories to make sure we could get everything we needed. On a whim, I asked her to check on our bed frame. This was the moment, Ikea. The moment you look back on and say, "Wow. Right there is where I totally blew it."
There was one in stock. Normally, this would not be an issue. In any other store, one in stock means one in stock. But seeing "one" in stock made our rep nervous. She tried to call someone in the stock area to find out if it was on the shelf. Twice. No one answered, Ikea. Perhaps we should have known what that omen would portend. Since I was dying under your interrogation lights, and my feet hurt from the miles of maze we had already traversed, and I was tired and hungry from being trapped in your store for over three hours already, I told her that we would just go check for ourselves.
You know what happened next. We made our way down to self-serve with our list of aisles and bins and a cart to lug our purchases out to the car. Luckily, Allen suggested we get the bed frame first as it was the biggest. We found the appropriate aisle, then the appropriate bin, labelled with "Opddal" so we knew we were in the right place, and found... Nothing. (Well, not nothing. We found plenty of Malm bed frames stacked in the Opddal section.) Allen went to find someone to help us. The response he got was something along the lines of "Well, if it's not on the shelf, we don't have it. The stock numbers are more like plus or minus five, so having one "in stock" doesn't mean anything."
We came to you with money in our pockets, prepared to spend well over $1000 on furniture and accessories. But like all abusive relationships, you left us upset and disappointed in the end. Feeling like we were stupid to have trusted you, and hating ourselves for buying into your promises. We left without giving you a single penny of our hard earned money. The only thing I am proud of that fateful day. We decided to wait until we had cooled down before making any further decisions about our relationship. I emailed your online customer service department to air my complaint with the hopes that you would try to win us back. We would have taken you back, you know, if you had shown even the tiniest bit of remorse or understanding about how upset we were. But you have grown so arrogant in your dominance in our relationship that you couldn't even muster up false sympathy. You know how limited our choices are for affordable, space-saving furniture, so your customer service rep basically told us we should have called the store in advance. Never mind that I did check the stock before we left, and checked again while we were in the store.
It was a classic non-apology. "I'm sorry you are mad, but it's your own fault."
So, that's it, Ikea. We're through. In our "consume or be consumed" world, customer service has taken a nose-dive at all retailers. Gone are the days when a store would try to win and keep your business. You certainly aren't the first to have treated us badly, Ikea, and I'm sure you won't be the last. But I can say with certainty that you'll never get the chance to hurt us again. "Fool me five times, shame on you. Fool me six or more times..." We put up with your crap for far too long and we refuse to do it anymore. The list of companies we will no longer buy from is growing longer, and our options for where to purchase things are growing shorter. We are unhappy with this turn of events, but the consolation is that we don't have to feel bad about funneling money into an ungrateful, bloated and arrogant corporation who cares only about its bottom line. We will gladly pay three times the price for a similar item, just for the pure satisfaction of getting it somewhere else. We will also happily search Craig's List and consignment shops and antique stores to find what we need. Your furniture may be new and flashy, but we've discovered that there is no soul underneath the pretty exterior.
So long, Ikea. It hasn't been fun, and I'm glad to be rid of you. I hope more people recognize your abusive ways and tell you goodbye.
Relieved that it's over,
-Autumn
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