A while ago, I moved house. For the first time in my life, I was moving into an unfurnished house, so I had to buy a huge amount of furniture when I moved. I'm happy to say that most companies have exemplary customer service, CSL, John Lewis, Staples, etc were all fine. Ikea did not.
A month later, fed up of trying to talk to Ikea customer services over the phone, (they really are terrible,) I wrote them This letter. This rather neatly sums up my complaint with the company. Ikea acknowledged receipt of the letter, then did nothing. After prompting, I managed to come up with some kind of resolution. The emails involved are all listed below, for those of you who expressed interest.
From: CORRESPONDENCE ACTION TEAM To: David Birch Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 13:06 +0200 Subject: IKEA --- Received from IKEA3.COAT . 08-09-03 13.06 -- Dear Mr Birch, Thank you for your letter. We have received it in Peterborough and we will try to get back to you within 14 days. Kind regards IKEA Correspondence Team ---- 08-09-03 13.06 ---- Sent to --------------------------------------------- -> dtb26@cantab.net
From: David Birch To: CORRESPONDENCE ACTION TEAM Date: 23 Sep 2008 10:23:55 +0100 Subject: Re: IKEA Dear Ikea. While I have to admit your continued practice of promising to contact me and then doing nothing appears to be consistent, it's still very annoying. I think it's time to start taking my complaints to third parties. Yours. David.
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:58 +0200 Subject: Re: IKEA --- Received from IKEA3.COAT . 08-09-23 13.58 Dear Mr Birch, Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience you have incurred with your delivery dates. I am showing four delivery dates confirmed; 16/7 23/7 8/8 20/8 and I would like to offer a goodwill gesture of 4 x £15 which equalls £60.and a further £10 due to the time frame involved. I would also like you to be aware, I will bring this to the attention of our manager at our delivery centre, but that this will be dealt with Internally. Awaiting your Instructions Gill Orviss
Date: 23 Sep 2008 14:09:44 +0100 Subject: Re: IKEA Dear Gill. I do not believe a payment of £70 signifies good will, considering that your delivery failures have cost me six days of work, and several of the goods delivered are damaged. Additionally, your customer service staff have already promised to refund the delivery charge, so you are really only offering £35, which feels a little like a token payment compared to a week of my working time. You have also not acknowledged in any way the damaged goods. (If you like, I can provide photographs of the damaged items.) I know that if I were to take this to a small claims court, I would be able to win compensation for the lost days at my rate of pay, and additional refund for the delivery charge and goods (This I estimate to be about £600). However, I'd prefer to avoid spending more days dealing with this. I am glad that you are at least talking to the delivery centre about this order. While I appreciate your offer, it suggests to me that Ikea isn't seriously concerned with the the issues my complaint raises. I'm not as concerned with the money as I am with the principle of the matter, so I don't feel I should accept a token goodwill gesture in exchange for the poor quality of service Ikea have provided. Can you offer a more realistic level of compensation? Yours Sincerely David.
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:35 +0200 Subject: Re: IKEA --- Received from IKEA3.COAT . 08-09-24 09.35 Dear Mr Birch, Thankyou for your reply, I have checked your case as you state you have already been offered your freight charge back, so I will naturally honour this in the goodwill gesture I have already offered. This will now be £105. May I take the opportunity to attempt to explain our policies with you sir. When a delivery fails which is a confirmed date IKEA offer all our customers the same goodwill which is £15,this is due to the diversity of our customers incomes,this is not a offer to represent your salary, but is classed as a leisure time payment as goodwill. Please be aware this will be taken up with our delivery company, so hopefully this does not happen again. Awaiting your Instructions Gill Orviss
Date: 24 Sep 2008 13:27:13 +0100 Subject: Re: IKEA Dear Gill. I thank you for the offer, although I am disappointed that your official policy precludes the situation where your staff agree a delivery date over the phone, then fail to enter it into the system. I'm sure if you check your phone records you'll find the other two arranged delivery dates. I will take your offer into consideration when deciding how to proceed. Can I ask what your policy is on the damaged goods? I have mentioned this several times, and you seem to be ignoring the problem. Legally I believe Ikea have not yet fulfilled their contract in any way. Yours Sincerely. David.
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:03 +0200 Subject: Re: IKEA --- Received from IKEA3.COAT . 08-09-25 09.03 Hello Mr Birch, I have re read through your complaint letter and the subsquent emails, even though you refer to damaged goods you do not state which one's. If you call 0845-358-3363 and inform the co-worker of the article code that is damaged they will re-order for you and also arrange a collection. Regards Gill Orviss ******************************************************************************
Date: 25 Sep 2008 09:55:14 +0100 Subject: Re: IKEA Dear Gill. My initial complaint letter clearly explains the damaged furniture. (I have copied the following directly out of the first letter.) (items purchased) 1x Expedit bookcase: article number:80071319 2x Ivar Side unit: article number:87489409 8x Ivar Shelf: article number:70095033 "the expedit bookcase had a significant dent in the top piece... The Ivar bookcase was a little worse off however. Two of the eight shelves were delivered without the metal bolts required to actually affix it to the bookcase, and one of the vertical supports is broken in two places." I would rather not arrange collection and delivery of replacement parts. I had already calculated that the expense incurred in taking another day off work to recieve the collection would be more costly than it was to go to a hardware store and buy the materials and equipment necessary to fix the problems. I realise that you could fulfil your contact simply by arranging a delivery of replacement parts, but given the current situation I consider this a waste of my time. Do you have another method of addressing this? Regards. David.
--- Received from IKEA3.COAT . 08-09-25 11.06 The only way forward if you are sure you do not wish an exchange is a damaged discount of the order at 20% which is £34.40 on top ofthe goodwill already offered. Regards Gill Orviss ********************************************************************************
Dear Gill. You have now addressed all of the complaints in my letter, although I still urge you to look into the situation where your staff inform a customer of a delivery and then fail to enter it into the system. The compensation you have offered is meagre in comparison to the standard policy of any other company I've heard or read about; However as you have at least now acknowledged all of the faults on the part of Ikea, I am now prepared to accept the offer. I still remain a dissatisfied customer, however I will take no further action on this. Yours sincerely David.
--- Received from IKEA3.COAT . 08-09-25 12.42 Dear Mr Birch, Thankyou for informing me of your decision, I have put your refund in our Admin's queue, and you will be credited the amount agreed £139.40 within the next 5 working days. once again my apologies for the problems. Regards Gill Orviss **********************************************************************************
They paid up, but it took more than 5 working days.
Back to Socks and Puppets