Allow me to vent about a major retailer for a moment. Nearly two years ago, we purchased an entire office-worth of furniture from the Ikea in Schaumburg, Illinois, with plans to replace our current home office fixtures. The plan was to put in new flooring in the room before construction of the do-it-yourself furniture. Unfortunately, other more pressing home improvement projects came up–and the new flooring got pushed back (because we are on the Dave Ramsey Plan and we weren’t about to borrow for the office makeover).
But finally this month, the new flooring went in–some paint touchup was done–and I could finally put together the Ikea furniture. After struggling with the no-words-just-generic-illustrations-for-directions, I thought that I had the file cabinet put together–but the middle drawer stuck out farther than the other two drawers–and I knew my “particular” wife would not be cool with that. So I called the “Customer Service Line” to inquire as to how to fix the problem.
After a 45-minute wait on the phone–because they are “experiencing high call volume” (as every business has been for the last ten years)–I finally got a real person on the line–who of course, couldn’t help me with my problem. That meant another 20-minutes on hold until “someone with more expertise in assembly” could pickup the phone. After I explained the issue, she called up the very same assembly manual that I already had in front of me (which offered no advice on how to get a drawer to go in farther) and then started “guessing” at what the fix may be. While following her direction to try and pull out the drawer and re-seat it on its rails I pulled up on the assembly (“you may have to pull pretty hard, sir) I ended up actually breaking a couple of plastic clips that are integral to keeping the drawer on the rails–rendering the drawer useless.
After telling my “expert” that the drawer had broken following her recommendations, she expressed no empathy or regret for giving me obviously wrong information and said that I would have to call a different number to get replacement parts sent to me. That meant another 45-minutes on hold (they are experiencing “high call volume” again this decade). After finally getting a “Customer Service Representative” and explaining to her the parts that I would need, I was informed that part cannot be shipped out–because it’s “hardware”–and that can only be picked up at the store itself.
Fighting back my growing rage, I accepted her offer to be transferred to the Schaumburg store to inquire about having the parts shipped to me–rather than wasting a day driving down there again. That is when I entered the “Phone Tree of Death”–being told to enter my parties extension number (which I couldn’t possibly know) or to “hold for the operator–which just took me back to the top phone menu again.
FINALLY after randomly hitting four digit extensions I got a real person to answer the phone!! She immediately told me that she had nothing to do with floor stock and transferred me to “a person who might know something about that”–where my call immediately went to voice mail. I can flat out guarantee that call will NEVER be returned.
So I guess I know what the wife and I will be doing some weekend in September. And people wonder why I wasn’t jumping up and down celebrating that one of these evil hell-holes is opening in Wisconsin.
