Ikea: purveyors of Swedish chic or the kind of hell that you can only imagine in your worst nightmares. That'll be the second option for me then!

A small number of you may know that about nine months ago I moved in to a small and sparsely furnished flat. Although a mattress was provided there was one small and very essential - when you're a part-time insomniac - item missing. A bed. Deciding that I didn't want to have to sell the newly acquired item of furniture at the end of the year, I decide to opt for a flat-pack bed-frame, that I should be able to dismantle and pack away. Finally, after trawling the internet and flicking through many catalogues I came across Ikea's Dalselv bed. It's the cheapest, and seemed to be pretty stylish.

So, what is Ikea's homepage like? At first glance it looks pretty good, but clicking on certain links doesn't actually work. In order to find the page you really want, you're going to have to really rack your brains. When you do get there, you can't be guaranteed that the information will actually be correct. Supposedly they give the dimensions of the flat-pack, but in my case I scrutinised it and worked out that if these dimensions were really in millimetres, then this could only be a micro-bed in a box!

Next stop was the customer services line. 'so, how big is the flat-pack this bed comes in then?' I wrote down the answer, and suddenly realised, about a day later, that this was actually the size of the bed! I rang again, and was given much more believable information, which satisfied me - especially when I was told that the bed was cheaper than advertised on the website! I also enquired whether or not they had a delivery service; at the cost of £35 (this price varies according to location) I could have the equivalent of two trolleys worth of items sent to my address - but delivery could only be made the next day. This appears both pricey and inconvenient. My particular situation was that I wanted to pack the night before moving and have the bed arrive the day I moved into the flat - all so that I could sleep on a proper bed and be ready for work the next day. (Although during the same phone conversation I was also able to check that delivery times could be selected from am, pm and evening.)

My first trip to Ikea was on the Sunday before moving. My then housemates family were going to Ikea to select items for her brother's new house, and I tagged along. I wanted to look at the bed to see how high it was off the ground, in order to find out how much extra storage I could gain from the frame-bed itself. (This was a question that could not be answered by the individuals on the customer services line.) On entering the building I browsed through the display areas, writing down the aisle and position that each item would be found in the warehouse. In order to reach the warehouse and tills, I had to walk through the accessories area...

This is really where Ikea comes into its own. The items are cheap, durable and have interesting designs. There are also interesting ideas for saving space, such as canvass zip up squares to store items under your bed. (These were very reasonable at £8 each.) More standard items such as clip-frames often have a bit of style, such as the rather unusually sized 50x50 frame that I bought on that trip - a size I have never seen elsewhere. (This item cost me around £2.50).

Both me and my friend's brother found one major problem to our buying delight. All of the items were sold out (except the bed, which had to wait anyway), and the queues for the checkouts took at least fifteen minutes to go through.

Daunted by my preliminary visit, but deciding the bed was still the best value, I attempted to return on the Wednesday night. Having to rely on public transport I took the tube to Neasden (the Brent Park Ikea) and began my walk. At first it appeared sporadically signposted with a little blue figure on a yellow background - indicating where you should walk, but on coming closer to Ikea the signs appeared to disappear, only to be replaced by ones indicating the way you should go if you want to travel by car. This is a key to Ikea. They want people with cars, people who travel by public transport are regarded as surplus to requirements.

Thirty minutes later I arrived at the store expecting to be out within half an hour to an hour at the most. Going straight to central area in the bed section I waited to be served for about five minutes, was given a print out, and told where to collect my bed. It transpired that the woman on the customer services line was wrong. She had given me the cost of the frame without the slats that had to be placed on the bed too - the bed was the full price I had first seen on the website.

After trundling my way through the accessories section, I grabbed a trolley and made my way to the aisle and position, and requested some help from a member of staff. Loaded up, I waited 20 minutes to get to the till. Here I was asked to check the balance before signing - it was £2 too expensive. I queried this, and we discovered that the assistant and I had picked up one set of slats for a double bed and one for a king size - but two king size slats had been rung through. Expecting an immediate refund and exchange I was told that this could not happen even though I had not signed my credit card slip. Instead I had to go to Customer Services.

Trying to manoeuvre my heavy trolley outside and back into the building in order to get to Customer Services was a feat in itself - and then I nearly cried. The number on my ticket was 574. The number on the screens was 522! I waited for 48 minutes for something which anywhere else could have taken one minute, two at the most. Oh, but it didn't stop there. This enabled me to get a credit note refund. (Although even this was confused - I won't go into the ins and outs here - its too confusing.) I still had to collect another set of slats, and wait for another 20 minutes to get through the check-out. I was then asked to go and get an attendant to sort out the problem with the credit note I had been given. (Why the cashier couldn't I still don't know.)

Once I had collected my unsupervised frame and slats from Customer Services I set off to the Deliveries section. At last I thought, nothing else can possibly go wrong... the delivery could only be made between 1pm and 10pm. The people who were meant to be helping me put the bed together would have left well before 10pm!

Finally, after arriving at Ikea, at 7.30pm I left at 10pm. Mentally and physically exhausted I still had to make my way home - which took me a further hour, and meant that I was packing items until 1am. Oh, and the bed arrived ten minutes after my 'construction team' left...

Ikea get one star for the price and quality of their products and their interesting designs, and my advice would be to go to them if you want good quality accessories. If you want anything else, please don't bother, unless you are willing to walk out of the place feeling that you have had a deeply traumatising experience. Even planning ahead can be thwarted by the inaccurate customer services telephone line and the misleading website. Personally, the next time I go to Ikea I will be expecting them to pay me, and at my current wage, that means that for my last visit alone they owe me (2.5 hours x £8) £20...

... "affordable solutions for better living" - Bah! Humbug!