Beware of IKEA furniture

I have always liked the deals you can get from IKEA. We bought a number of items from IKEA. Almost three years ago, we bought an EKTORP sectional couch. We were a little skeptical about buying the couch as it was IKEA furniture, but they had 10 year warranty splashed all around the area and the assurances that we could bring it back if we had problems.

About a month ago I had called IKEA to see what I needed to do to get the couch fixed. I knew it was having troubles. The call center put a trace out to track down my receipt as I didn't have the original and said someone from the store will call me to tell me what I needed to do to get the warranty work started.

A week later, I got a call from the local IKEA store. I was informed that I had to bring the sofa to the store for inspection before they would authorize any work. I asked what the inspector would be looking for and the answer was "workmanship". I asked what that meant, and he replied, very rudely, "workmanship". I asked if there was any way I could pay for someone to come out to the house to look at the couch as I had to have the couch delivered. "No, you will have to bring it in. It's the only way." I asked if he could fax a copy of the receipt and he said is wasn't necessary - just bring it in.

So, when we cleared out the living room to get the flooring done, I actually got to see the extent of the damage - and it wasn't good. The center beam had sheared through the main frame and the back was coming undone.

First of all, the shearing was happening because there is no structural support at that location. It's bad design. In the photo above, what you're seeing is the cross beam below the frame. The frame beam has broken and the dowels going into the beam sheared straight through the beam. Maybe this photo will show it a little better.

The other real problem is the back is no longer stapled to the back beam. This is what it should look like:
Here's what it does look like:

To me, the staples are really bad quality and the whole reason why it's coming apart.

My friend doing the flooring installation was really nice and allowed me to use his truck - so I loaded the pieces up and got to IKEA - it was 10:30.

I had to wait for 20 minutes before I got someone to help me at the desk only to be told that this was not her usual station. She refused to get anyone to help me get the furniture into the store until she was able to track down the reciept - and she told me a number of times that it was MY responsibility to keep the original receipt and that she was just doing me a favor by tracking down the transaction. So, I had to wait for 40 minutes before she came back and said that they had a copy of the reciept. I asked for help with unloading the sofa and she wandered off. After getting one piece off the truck, I finally had someone come and offer to help. That took another 20 minutes to unload everything. I was then told to wait till they had their quality control guy look over the sofa.

By this time, I was a little hot so I told the guys that I needed to cool off and I went to look at stuff. After a half an hour, I came back and waived at the Customer Service guys to show them I was back. It took them another 10 minutes to get a manager. Kim, the manager, came up and told me that her QC guy looked at the sofa and determined that it was not a workmanship issue.

I told her that I did not agree and tried to explain to her that the wood sheared right at the joint. Then she told me that she had the same sofa and had a 3 year old niece come and jump on her sofa and it broke in the same place as where the damage was on my sofa.

I must admit that I thought I was calmed down pretty well when I came back. When she told me about her niece, she was basically telling me that we were abusing the furniture. I told her that it was very insulting that she told me that because it just sent a message to me that she believed that we were abusing the furniture.

I was really upset.

I asked if there was any one I could appeal this to, and she said no. The decision was made. So I told her that I wanted to load it back onto the truck and asked if I could have help. She helped wheel it out to the truck and then told me that I had to wait for help. I looked at her and told her that I had been here for two and a half hours and that I wasn't going to wait any more. I also told her that this was terribly inconvenient to have to haul the whole couch here to find out the warranty was not what was originally billed to us. She said that someone could have come out to look at the damage. I must admit that at that point I yelled. I told her that I called two weeks ago and asked. She said that that was a call center and they wouldn't know. I told her that NO it wasn't the call center it was a person from THIS store. Well, she would have to take this issue up with the managers of the store to see if they could offer this service. I was so mad at this point that I started to load the furniture onto the truck myself. THEN I got the help I needed to get it loaded.

Ugh.

Never. Again. Will. I. Buy. Furniture. That. Can. Be. Sat. On. Or. Slept. In. From. IKEA.

Plus their customer service SUCKS.

I'm also a savvyer person now when it comes to warranties. Workmanship warranties aren't worth a damn.

So, now I'm having a furniture repair guy come to see if it can be repaired fairly inexpensively. An upolsterer wanted $500 to fix it and said that it wouldn't last.

Make the hemoraging of money stop. . .