ikea.com > Reviews (4)

A few years back if you asked anyone about what comes from Sweden, they'd have probably listed Bjorn Borg, Abba and Volvos. Ask now and Ikea is bound to figure prominently for many people, especially for those of us fortunate to live not too far from one of their stores. (Fortunate I suppose if you do like huge blue and yellow buildings on your doorstep...on second thoughts maybe I'm glad I'm half hour away!)

I've visited their stores a few times and have bought a few items of furniture. Never had any complaints about the quality itself - in fact like the aforementioned imports I've always found it pretty solid, reliable and you know what you're going to get. But trekking round the stores has always put me off. I have over half an hour drive to get to my closest one in Warrington, you can queue for ever at the checkouts, if you have the misfortune to buy something and then once you've got home found anything wrong you have to repeat the process - 45 mins wait to replace one bookcase shelf once!!! And you have to bring it all home yourself....that limits options when you only have a small Fiesta! Consequently I've not visited Ikea for a while. Then a new one opened in Ashton, not much further from me than Warrington, and handily about 5 mins from my boyfriend's house so temptation did arise again. And then to cap it all I heard that it's now possible to shop online or have home delivery - Christmas has come early!!!

I'm decorating my son's bedroom and he's getting some new furniture. I'd already seen one of those loft beds in Argos, nice and simple, I dont want the sort with desk and futon. I know that Ikea do them too but their beds are a non-standard size so you can only get mattresses from them...too much hassle I decided. But I did need a desk to go under the bed, one that would fit alongside other furniture I've already got. So I headed for the website. Now I like to do my online shopping in two ways. I like to often visit a store to see the item for real, then order online for the convenience and often money-saving factor. Or I check out recommendations and specifications online and then pick up when I'm in the shop itself. For Ikea I was planning on doing it the first way.

I headed for the section on desks and saw a few items that were possibles. I duly made a note of them and then clicked on the Shop Online tab to see just how much delivery charges were etc. At that point the page opened to tell me that online shopping is available in the East Midlands, so as I'm not near Nottingham I can't have it! I was given the option to leave my e-mail details so they can contact me when online shopping has rolled out further through the UK.

So plan A was now disintegrating a bit! But never mind, there's still this option of home delivery after all. As it happens before I had the chance to go back to the website I was going over to Ashton, so decided I would pop to the store to check out the desks I'd earmarked. When I got there, a couple of the desks I'd noted didnt really seem to be as nice in real life, but I saw a workstation that looked fantastic for my sons room.

I made a note of it's name (Fredrik) and size details so I could show my son later. I also saw a bed (Tromso) as well and I knew that the workstation would fit under it so decided to also note that just in case. As I left the store I saw the big posters about home delivery being available and decided that I would definitely use that option, but as I was short of time right then I figured I'd check out the details on the website later.

Back home I headed back to the computer. I knew I needed to know the height available under the bed if I wanted to be sure the workstation I'd seen would fit. I checked the Argos catalogue online for the bed I'd planned to buy....no such details. I rang Argos, spoke to 4 different people who all told me what was already listed but no more, though in the end they arranged for someone to go to the storeroom and open a box, call me back and tell me what I needed to know. It wasn't going to be big enough!! Never mind, I now just buy both bed and workstation from Ikea.

So, with son sat expectantly with me I sit down and log back onto the Ikea website. Now what I hadn't realised is that when you log onto the UK site it puts you onto a page for a specific store, or at least it did for me, maybe I'd had cookies stored. But it was the Ashton store where I'd been so not a problem. First thing I did was go to look at the bed. As I knew the actual name of the item I went via the A-Z list, rather than drill through the 'bed' section. Fantastic...all the details I could possibly want were there so we went to the bedroom and measured everything up and knew it would be just right. Then while on that page I noticed it said we could make better use of the space under this bed by buying the Tromso workstation. It just gets better...I can have all matching stuff now! So I type in Tromso for the workstation.....and get no results! OK, maybe they don't have it in stock there. At least I know they've got the other one I'd seen. So I type in Fredrik to show him.....no results found!! Hmmmm...so let me get this right..a desk I've sat at, touched, written price and measurements for doesnt appear to exist 2 days later. There is 'Ask Anna', an online help centre with interactive assistance from Anna, to help you with on-site problems. I ask her...she doesn't help, just tells me Ikea offer a good range of products at low prices!!

OK, maybe I can give them a ring and check on stock availability. Let's check out the home delivery details while I'm here. Scroll down through the many store details to the home delivery section and 'click here for delivery costs' I clicked there and a separate pdf opened to show me they don't deliver from Ashton to my house...aaarrrggghhhh!!!!!

OK, maybe Warrington will deliver to me as they're probably close to me anyway. Let's go check that Warrington store has the stuff in stock......

Change page easily to the Warrington store and type in the Tromso bed. Yes that's there as hoped, and it says there's stock available..perfect.

Oh look, they also mention the matching workstation..worth a try. Or not...no results found!! Never mind, lets try the Fredrik workstation......nope, no joy there either. Now my patience was getting a little stretched by this point....try going through this with a 12 yr old beside you! Well I'm going to want the bed anyway, let's sort out home delivery. Scroll through all the store details, special offers, even restaurant menus...no mention of home delivery!!! So I live too far away from Ashton for them to deliver but Warrington don't appear to do home delivery?? At this point it looks like it's going horribly wrong. Well let's just try phoning them.

So first question I ask is whether they do home delivery. She asks my postcode and tells me that yes they do - I don't even care about the £45 delivery charge by this point! I mentioned that the website doesn't tell customers this, to be told that as you have to go in the store to purchase the goods anyway it doesn't really matter about it being on the website. Oh yes it does if you're trying to plan just how to get hold of these things!!! So then I mentioned that the Tromso page had referred to the workstation. She had a look for me on her system (presumably a far better system than mere customers get to see!) and said it appeared that this system was being discontinued, and as far as she could tell had never been available here. So why mention it on a website!!! Ok, it's not her fault...but what about the Fredrik desk? I said I'd seen this in store in Ashton but couldn't find it on the website for either Ashton or Warrington. (In fact I'd not seen it online at Leeds, Croydon, Edinburgh or Nottingham either but I didn't burden her with that detail!) She did another search and told me that yes they did do it, it was in stock but she wasn't surprised I hadn't found it online because 'the website doesn't really show all the products' So that's helpful...it does mention products that no longer exist, but doesn't cover products that do exist so you can't check out details!!!

As I knew I'd have to go to the store to buy them anyway I just told my son that when we were ready to get them he'd have to come with me to check he wanted them. It's not like I can just handily pop to one in 10 minutes just to check it out - with a good 30 mins drive I only want to go the once, thats why I wanted to show him on the website! In the end a bit more searching did let me see the Fredrik workstation...but it was a good thing I'd made a note of the details I needed as I accessed the picture via the Swedish part of the website. Despite working for an Anglo-Swedish company, and having many friends/colleagues in Sweden I can't speak the language more than to say hello or thank you, and certainly not enough to understand technical specifications of a desk!

So in a few weeks time I will be phoning to check they have the desk and bed in stock...cant check availability online as the desk doesn't exist online! The people on the phone are very nice and helpful but I did have to queue on the phone.

The whole point of a website is to let you avoid that. As I said, I like Ikea products, but the distance to the stores makes shopping hard work. This website does give a lot of details about the products that it shows - good pictures, you can choose your colour and the picture changes to show the whole item in that colour rather than just a swatch which is great, and the product information is great. But I now know that there could be other more suitable items if only they were listed. Things like home delivery are well detailed for one store, absent for another. It's made me quite distrustful of the site generally which is a shame. The lack of online shopping over a bigger area is a disappointment though they are apparently working on this. But when you see a tab 'Shop Online' it does give you false hope - I'd rather a more honest upfront section to let people know it is a limited option.

I would recommend the website generally as pointer to what's out there but with the caveat that there may be more available. I'd be happy to shop more at Ikea but this website just doesn't help make it easy!

Please note that for rating this product I've had to complete certain fields don't apply to my use of this site, as I was unable to actually make purchases. I've therefore gone with satisfactory as I can't praise or criticise them, but don't have a 'not applicable' option