Their stuff is never that fancy, but it always works, it’s good quality, easy to put together, and it’s dirt cheap, as far as furniture prices go, anyway. I found this really groovy bookshelf.
Which I ordered two of, and will use to occupy the unwindowed wall of my bedroom. I also ordered a stand/shelf type thing for my TV and stereo. But let me tell you what annoys me.
IKEA has no online ordering system. For a company as high-tech and gr00vy and with a very large target demographic of Swingin’ Bachelors Who Are Technologically Advanced, it is a real abomination. You can’t look at a picture on the site and press a button and get it put in the basket. Instead, you have to go to their order form thing, which appears to be a pretty frontend to formmail, and manually copy and paste the item numbers from the product page into the form. Then fill out your address, and then they call you to get your credit card info. Not even an SSL server for ordering.
What a waste of precious Scandinavian human resources. Perhaps if they weren’t so busy calling customers they could get to work inventing another tool.
Like a screwdriver.
I’m willing to put up with it though, since those bookshelves really are damn groovy.
I found this to be very strange, so I decided to check it out. Lo’ and behold, only we swedes are fortunate enough to have a fully functional webstore at IKEA. This conclusion however is based on a quite narrow selection (Sweden, USA, Norway and Denmark) so variations may occur, but that’s my first impression.
Rest of Europe is following with webstores this autumn as far as I understand. Can’t say that this makes me do sommersault with glee since I vehemently hate all things IKEA.
Yeah, I’ll second that damn pox!! One of the bestest things at Ikea are the desklamps. Really good-looking, functional and cheap! Wonderful things! Except you have to buy a swathe of their own globes to go with them. You can’t just duck into Safeway to buy a replacement. You’ve gotta go to Ikea (which is many miles from my house) and pay an exorbitant price for a bit of filament and glass to illuminate your reading matter!
IKEA doesn’t make money on those stupid bookshelves everyone buys. They make money on all the other shit you didn’t really need, but throw into your cart whilst negotiating a three hour IKEA Grand Prix through their maze of conveniently places “SPECIAL!!!” displays, “SALE!” signs, and even a crappy restaurant.
A webstore? Much too direct. IKEA relies on impulse buys and herd behaviour.
And that’s coming from someone who actually likes them a lot.
God, you’re right. On Saturday I went to IKEA to buy a bookshelf, and I came home with a bookshelf, a wicker basket, a lamp (no bulbs…uh-oh), two chopping boards, some candles, a little cabinet thing for keys ($4.95), picture frames, kitchen utensils, two pillows, and a throw rug. What a sucker.
But let me just say I really, really love all the unfinished wood furniture and doo-dads they have – I love being able to paint and decorate them however I wish.
I like IKEA, so I don’t mind picking up my own furniture in the self-serve area. What I DO mind is getting down there to find “oops! Temporarily out of stock” with no indicator on the sales floor that the PERFECT stereo shelf is backordered and the imbeciles in the information area have no friggin’ clue when they’ll get more in.
So my stereo sits on the floor while I contemplate another three hour drive to IKEA in a couple weeks whent he shelf will supposedly be in.
Yeah, they offered to send it to me – for $200 for a $70 shelf. Nope.
I don’t think I’ve ever spent less than $75/trip to Ikea. I love that store!
I’m not one to order funiture on line but I’d like to be able to peruse their complete catalog online, though. Luckily for me, Ikea’s but a mere twenty minute drive from my house.
Hmm…just over 5’ high and 5½’ wide…and can be put along the wall where our AC vent while hardly blocking the vent…I’ll have to look into getting one of these.