Wow, IKEA really sucks.

In October, I ordered a bed for my new apartment. I already had an old hand-me-down from the family, but it was a little too big to fit in my new bedroom. I opted to go cheap and simple with a bed from IKEA.

$250 total for the bed, plus $100 for the shipping. I struggled with spending almost half of the cost of the bed in shipping, but figured that it would save me time and trouble. Being in Manhattan, I have no car, so getting anything delivered right to your door is a plus.

IKEA Bed

The bed was delivered this past Saturday by a service called Urban Express. Putting it together was simple - so simple that I drafted a blog post about IKEA as a model company for interaction design. Don’t expect that post anytime soon…

After finishing the bed frame, I put down the “slotted bed base” (the part that holds up the mattress), only to realize it covered half of the bed. The mattress sagged through the frame.

It turns out I needed 2 identical pieces, 1 of which was missing from the parts delivered.

OK, no problem. The first call goes to Urban Express. “I’m missing a piece. Please check if it’s in the delivery truck.”

It isn’t. “OK, please check if it’s in the warehouse.” It isn’t.

Urban Express says they never received it from IKEA. So I ask Urban Express to go get it.

I’m not worked up enough at this point to press the matter when they say it is out of their hands. Instead, they give me the information to contact IKEA.

I’m not an Urban Express customer, IKEA is. The only thing I can do is keep repeating the name Urban Express in this post along with my assessment of their service as “100% Mediocre”. Beware the Google Fu.

But I digress.

So I call IKEA, and get a customer service representative who tells me I need to get in touch with Urban Express. I explain that I don’t know or care if Urban Express screwed up. I paid IKEA to deliver it to me. If they chose a second rate vendor, that’s their problem.

The customer service rep tells me the only action he can take is to file a claim, and a claim representative will call me within 24 hours to settle the matter.

In the meantime, I no longer have floorspace for my mattress (the bed is in the way), so I’m going to be sleeping on the couch. But this is at 5pm Saturday, and I’m sick of talking to these people. I concede and go have a beer. Okay - many beers.

After 25 hours, at 6pm Sunday, I am fuming. I call IKEA again (1-800-434-4532). This time, I quickly get past the customer service rep. I’m being too difficult for the amount they pay him. He connects me to a “supervisor”.

Enter Syra (extension 1517), supposed call center manager, and the highest IKEA person in the building. You can try the extension, but it doesn’t exist.

She assures me that they will send out the missing part, which will arrive next Friday via UPS. Unacceptable, I say. I have nowhere to sleep until they send it, and I refuse to sleep on the couch another night. They need to overnight it.

Syra says that IKEA cannot overnight anything. Bullshit. Why can’t she walk down to the local FedEx herself and send it? I know someone at IKEA has sent something via FedEx at some point in history. No, she says, they have not.

DHL? UPS overnight? Where is the urgency?

As you can imagine, the conversation goes in a big circle from that point on. I won’t get off the phone, and the only thing Syra is empowered to do is talk to me.

I finally get Syra to give me the number for her direct supervisor (who she says is IKEA corporate). I have her process the missing part via regular UPS so that if I cannot get it overnighted, I’ll still get it at some point.

I haven’t had a chance to call corporate yet (I’d wanted to finish this post first so I can refer them here). You can try them at 1-610-834-0180. However, I did call for Syra again on Wednesday to see where my package was.

The customer service rep said he “did not have access” to give me tracking for my shipment, and could not confirm whether it was even processed! He also denied the existence of anyone at the call center named Syra, and would not connect me to extension 1517. I suspect the extension and person were bogus.

IKEA’s claim to fame is that they are simple and cheap.

But the time I’ve wasted dealing with IKEA has cost me more than the product itself. And there is also my loss of peace of mind from having such painful interactions with people whose job description undoubtedly says “pacify the customer” more often than it says “fix what we did wrong”.

What a backwards system. Less expensive doesn’t have to mean cheaper.

So other than my ranting and raving, what’s the point?

IKEA lost a golden opportunity to impress me. Instead of writing a post filled with glowing praise for their interactive design, I’ve written about their lackluster relationship with customers.

At this point, getting me my missing product does little to mitigate their screwup. At least I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep.

IKEA, like many large corporations, has a customer service center with the mandate of making me go away, not making me happy. This is what happens when you have a VP of Customer Service that has to worry about the bottom line of his unit.

He cares about customers staying off the line, not being happy. His job is to make it so painful to call that we just hang our heads and shuffle on. The system is all wrong.

IKEA is sending me the missing product in the hopes that I’m too busy to cry over spilt milk once I’ve been poured a fresh glass.

A better company would give me back my money for shipping. It’s a simple logical step; I paid a premium to not have to expend any effort to get my bed, but they made me expend three times the effort because of their idiocy.

But that still makes them a bad company that hurts people then hands out lollipops.

An even better company would go over the top. Comp the bed. Give me a gift voucher for more IKEA merchandise. But that’s just the same company with a tastier lollipop.

A great company would go over the top in a personal way. Write me a personal letter. Apologize on the phone. Comment on my blog. Fill in the holes in the story so I know why things didn’t work out correctly and what steps are being taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

They think the marginal cost is negligible. Their cost-benefit analysis says to them, “1 in N customers is unhappy. Screw ‘em.” But I have a megaphone, and more customers have megaphones every day. Their cost-benefit model is broken because they can’t tell the difference between the loud and quiet customers.

With more and more customers writing blogs, participating in stronger and broader social networks, and a market that is extremely competitive in the “make me happy” department, there is an opportunity for a smarter company.

Someone should tell IKEA that the new, louder customer is a golden opportunity. I could have written about IKEA like Zaz wrote about Zappos.

It’s not too late. Wow me.

No one expects things to go perfectly every time. But we do expect people to act concerned when they light our hair on fire.

Update: It sounds like Seth has a similar story about Paypal. 

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