Hey Ikea, are you listening?

Do you have a web crawler searching for every post about you, IKEA?

You should—because, you need to be listening. OR are you deaf? Too bad if you are IKEA, because you are falling very short –and you really need to be paying attention.

First, let me say, I am not a contractor, never been one, and never worked for one (with one? Yes, more that one!) and IKEA, you have a problem. You need to learn the contracting business if you are going to sell it—and when you do sell it, it needs to be IKEA quality—or your brand is going to suffer.

I like your products, and I have been a customer of IKEA long before you opened you Hicksville NY store—I had friends in the Philadelphia area, and visiting them also meant, visiting (and shopping) you too.

I am a classic DYIer. Right now, my great room is a testament to my shopping habits. I have Ikea shelving, serving as a display/china cabinet. I have an Ikea dining room table too. My shelving? It is lit up like a Christmas tree, with Ikea lighting fixtures—some used exactly as you intended them, and some I put to different uses... I have a room divider, too, made from Ikea components—but one that I customized to meet my needs. I am writing this on my dell computer, which is sitting on a Ikea desk, with an IKEA file cabinet, My living room couch? An Ikea one. The artwork on my wall? Framed with Ikea frames, (same too, in my kitchen. ) There is a lot of IKEA lighting in the living room, too.

But today, I am really very unhappy with you Ikea. You have messed up, and messed up bad. You have (and are continuing to) hurt someone I love.

In your efforts to reach out to the non DYI market, you have missed your mark. Your Products are great—but your customer service? It SUCKS. And it SUCKS BIG TIME. Clearly you know how to build a great product, but in your efforts to sell this product, you have fallen short--

Leaving a family (with infant children) with out a working Kitchen, (and being totally indifferent to it) for a month is not the expected level of service I expect from IKEA. Handing out information “here, contact the Customer Service Co-ordinator” that includes a non working telephone number (and when asked again, we get the same number from another IKEA associate, and then, when the manager is asked, the same non-working number is given for the third time!) Is a major FAIL. Fail, fail and fail again!

Yes, I know contracting work is difficult, and that in any big job there are unexpected problems. That is life. What makes the difference is HOW these problems are handled, and resolved. The best cabinets in the world, (and while yours are good, I am not sure they are the best) are just one part of a kitchen—and if you want to be not just a store that sell cabinets, but one that sells KITCHENS, you had better get your act together.