Here’s the situation: I need to buy some furniture from IKEA. In fact, I need to buy a lot of furniture — a couple of beds, some dressers and so on. The rest of my family isn’t here to help me, and I need to have the furniture in place before they get here.
I went down to the IKEA in Schaumburg a couple of weeks ago, but decided that the boxes for the furniture weren’t going to fit in my sedan. I did find, however, that would be difficult for me to get the furniture by myself regardless, because the boxes are very big and very heavy.
I can borrow a van from a co-worker in a couple of weeks to make a second attempt. But if I get there and find what I need, will the employees be able to help me load the boxes onto the carts and wait with the boxes while I go get the van and bring it to the loading bay? Or will they tell me I’m on my own? When I was there a couple of weeks ago, it was incredibly busy, and there were few employees to be found (on the ground level, at least).
I’ve been to Ikea many times over the past ten years, and I’ve never seen an employee helping people load things into their car. However, who knows. If you ask a friendly and bored employee, they may be willing to do it…
I’ve pretty much always gone with other people, but our Ikea does have business cards for delivery services who will pick up the stuff and bring it to your house (they’re not officially affiliated with Ikea – I don’t think Ikea does any delivery themselves). We used such a service once when we bought a whole bunch of office furniture, and it worked out well. Might be an option.
But really folks . . . If I were in your situation I’d go up and make a list of the stuff I want, then go park in the loading area, then go grab the stuff and buy it. If it’s too heavy for you to load into the van, then what’s your plan to get it out of the van and into your house?
The website mentions delivery services, and from the description, it sounds like they do it themselves. It also mentions assembly and installation services, but specifically says this would be by an independent third party.
Hmm. Interesting. Maybe it’s changed, or maybe it’s different at the Seattle store. I know there’s some other stuff that’s different at the Seattle location than every other one in the nation (I’ve seen things in the ads that say “Except in Seattle”). Not sure why.
Yeah, I should have been clearer… The co-worker is letting me borrow his old van, but he’s not up for going down there with me. He said he would help me unload the stuff into my apartment. It’s a 5-hour roundtrip from Madison.
I’m pretty sure you can’t just park in the loading zone and then go inside for an hour to buy the furniture. (And if it’s as busy as last time, it will take an hour to track down the boxes, load them onto the cart, and check out.)
Maybe I should just open up a thread asking if any Dopers in Chicago would like to go to IKEA a week from Saturday.
Edit to add: I looked at the delivery service, but it would cost hundreds of dollars — probably $300-400 for everything I need — and if I wanted to spend that kind of money, I wouldn’t be shopping at IKEA in the first place.
Definitely won’t help you load. I think it’s a mixture of liability issues and “we just don’t care” mentality. And also pretty sure you can’t just park and shop. You’re bound to piss someone off, just don’t know if it’ll be someone who can do something about it.
If you won’t pay for shipping, is there anyway at all to get SOMEONE to help? Hell, go downtown and hire a few day laborers. You can get them to put together the stuff too.
Have you tried picking up the phone and calling them? I’d guess that if it’s between finding someone to help you and losing your business, they’d pick the former.
I haven’t been to an Ikea in about 10 years, so maybe there’s something about their business model I’m not recalling.
Ikea usually has parking spaces really close to the exits, where you can park while unloading. The idea is you walk outside with your cart loaded with boxes, leave it outside and pray it doesn’t get stolen (or have your shopping partner, which you don’t have, watcht it) go get your car, park it, load everything in, and drive off.
You can’t park there for longer then ten minutes.
As for help with loading, they don’t help because the prices are based on DIY.
IKEA has business ventures with deleivery companies, but as you said, they are procey.
However, if you go to the customers service with your full cart (they are behind the registers) and ask nicely, they may ring for somebody to come. They did for me when I was pregnant.
Really, your best bet is to have somebody come with you. Ask around; most people (other co-workers) would love to go to an Ikea.
You’re kind of screwed if you go shopping by yourself and pretty much counting on the idea that very few people will think to walk away with your stuff (or are too busy wrestling their own stuff) while you’re moving your car from the parking spot way across the lot to the loading zone.
Oh, and the IKEA workers will say that they’ll watch the boxes… but they’re nowhere to be seen when you drive up 5 minutes later. (Or, so is my experience). IKEA is not in the business of selling to single people.
If you’re not able to load the stuff from your cart into your car, how do you plan to load it from the warehouse shelf to your cart? In my experience there are not people to help do that either.
And those damn carts with the unfixed wheels … it’s like the movie where they try to load something on the back of the donkey and the donkey walks out from under it.
If I were you, I’d order it online and have it delivered.
Speaking of that. I always had a grand ol’ time back in college when I went to IKEA with a friend of mine. It took him five minutes to get more stressed than a Dachshund about to get raped by a Grand Danois and the rest of the time was spent in a stress induced “coma”.
While I was laughing merrily at each step he took and making sure he actually got out again.
I’m not the OP, but when I bought a ton of stuff from IKEA, there was a big cart thing with wheels that I was able to put the boxes on and wheel them to the loading zone. At that point, there were barriers to keep people from moving the cart thing any further and even without the barriers, there were stairs between that point and my car.
WormTheRed’s reply reminded me that Sanibelmans’s best bet is to bring a woman to Ikea. A man will wnat to get out as soon as possible. Women love IKEA, men don’t. Be sure your dieal IKEA woman is strong, and that she doesn;t have too much shoppign of her own to do, or your van won’t be able to hold the extra boxes.
That, or a delivery service. IKEA does only limited on-line shopping. There is a recent thread about that around here somewhere.
