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I don’t know how the IKEA owner became one of the richest men in the world but shopping at IKEA’s retail store or online is a nightmare. We went to the store to pick up furniture for my office remodeling. We picked out 5 bookshelves, a rather large desk with many pieces and parts and a file cabinet.

So we decided what we wanted and had a kid help us make sure we got all the pieces we needed for the desk and other items. He enters everything into the computer. A couple of pieces are out of stock so we contemplate taking it off the list and ordering the missing parts online. The kid prints up the list and tells us to go pick up the items.

Unfortunately, this is where there is a gap the size of the grand canyon between sales and fulfillment. I head down to the “bins” to pick up my items and encounter the following:

1. Can’t find the bookshelves but after I do find them, I can’t tell the colors apart. I wanted Birch and everything seemed to be white. There is no one around to ask.

2. Upon looking at the shelves, I realize that there is no way that all this stuff is going to fit in my SUV so I go and ask about delivery. The delivery guys say it’ll be few days for delivery so I conclude that I may as well go home and order online and get everything shipped to my door.

3. I get home and open website which is HORRIBLE! The site looks nice but it is completely disfunctional. I have a PRINTED list of all the items from the store along with “Article Numbers.” I guess it was too radical an idea to think that I could simply type the article numbers in the search bar to find and select the items I wanted.

4. I spend about 30 minutes manually searching for all the parts but unfortunately only about 30% of IKEAs products are online! Why?

5. What is even worse is finding the part I wanted but not able to change the color. Some items were only available in white or black but the option for birch or beechnut was no where to be found. Why? Note that different colors were available at the store if you could find them.

6. Curious to find out how much shipping would have cost had I been able to find all the parts, I try to find out what the shipping cost is going to be but that is no where to be found on the website.

7. There is a “helper” application that I try to use but it’s completely useless.

As horrible as this experience reads, I will probably go back to the store and try to get the items ordered. This store clearly doesn’t deserve the $1000+ I’m about to spend there but they do have the custom hardware I need for my office. The ONLY thing IKEA has going for it IMHO, is that it offers custom furniture solution to fit your needs but the experience of shopping there or online is horrible.

After getting my office furniture, I won’t ever go back there again.