Nastygram to IKEA

To whom it may concern,

I recently had a very poor experience at the Philadelphia IKEA store. The staff in the display sections were helpful and well-informed, the checkout staff was also helpful.

However, the staff at the pick up area was a total disaster. I checked out att eh cashier at 10:47, packed the self-serve items in the car and went over to the waiting area to pick up my full serve items. There, I see a sign telling me it will be '7 minutes., +1 minute per extra item.' This means that I should, by your own reckoning, wait either 8 minutes or at most 10 minutes as I was picking up 2 of 2 diffferent items.

However, I found that this was a lie on your part. had I known it would take as long as it did, I might have gone for lunch, or to another store to shop, or anything.

After 45 minutes (of watching several IKEA employees seeming to do nothing and only one IKEA employee actually carting stuff out now and then) I asked one employee what was the hold up. He went back to check and after several minutes returned to tell me that the order was 'being taken care of'. I returned to waiting. I watched as several people who had arrived after me get their orders.

After _another_ 1/2 hour I was getting downright fed up and asked the same employee why, if the order was 'being taken care of' was it still not brought out yet? He went back again, then came back to tell me he would pick the order personally. I guess that meant that my order was most certainly *not* 'being taken care of'!

It took this employee about 20 minutes to get the order our, minus one item that was not actually in inventory. I was told to take a piece of paper to the returns department for a refund . In other words, go wait in another line. I almost exploded but I just wanted out of there. Arrangements were made for delivery. By the time I rolled my items to my car it was 12:45, I had been waiting almost 2 hours for something your store promises in 10 minutes.

I have been a customer of IKEA for many years, and have had to wait for Full Serve items in the past, sometimes for orders with many, many more items than the four things I ordered today. Never have I had to put up with such a excessively long wait or had to put up with so many lies and nonsense from the staff.

It is my hope, that since there were other customers with long wait times (though none as long as mine was) that you will takes steps to shake up the completely incompetent management & staff of the Full Serve department at the Philadelphia store. I await your answer on this matter.