Ikea mess up - is there anything I can do?

To be honest IKEA are truly appauling at this kind of thing - I've had loads of problems with them in the past. Whilst you can try finding someone more senior to shout at you're probably still not going to get a delivery any earlier. Any way you can get someone to take you to collect a bed so you have something to sleep on?

If you do end up hiring a van make sure you get a print out of all the parts of the large furniture you need from someone in store. My friend recently bought a wardrobe with sliding doors, the girl who helped did not include the rails for the doors. When we went to get them a guy gave her the wrong number (different type of rails depending on the colour of the wood, even though its the same wardrobe wtf?!) and we didn't know until it had been half assembled. When we took it back to explain they took 30% from her refund because it had been opened and she didn't have a printout to prove she was given the wrong part number. Complete nightmare.

Can you get them to give you a refund of the 'must haves' so that you can collect those things, maybe?

I feel for you, I bet you can't wait to be back in your own home, all sorted out

L
xx

Thanks ladies. Lois, in a way, it's all 'must have' although the most important bits are the wardrobes, and they're so tall they won't fit in the car. I suggested to H that we cancel the order and hire a van and go and get it all but he's digging his heels in and just wants to wait for the delivery. I REALLY wanted to have the wardrobes in, so we could at least unpack clothes, but for the moment, I'm being overruled. We've got mattresses we can sleep on, but after all this upheaval, the thought of spending the first few days effectively camping in our own house, makes me feel ill.

I'm just so ground down with it. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how draining it all is. Tell you what though, I feel like packing in my job and becoming a proper project manager cos I'd be brill at it, and a bloody sight better than the fools we had to deal with. Do you ever get to a point, when it's all finished when you can think "ok, it was worth it?"

On top of this, one of our neighbours John-the-old-git has fallen out with us because he's had to tolerate looking at 2 skips on our drive. FFS! How hard his life is. What the hell he thinks we could have done differently, I really don't know. I was looking at him earlier, and thinking how hard I'd like to kick his face in. This is what I'm reduced to - assaulting old men.

[rant over. for now.]

After the rubbish time you've had over the house being flooded and all the arangements and stress I'd be tempted to cancell Ikea in a fit of pique and buy elsewhere. Luckily / hopefully my H would be the voice of reason.

I have no idea how you can persuade Ikea to change their delivery date, you probably can't I'm afraid. Perhaps you could push for further compensation.

Could you arrange the chippy for the Thurs the 11th Friday the 12 to have everything done as and delay moving by 2 days, I mean move your stuff over whenever but instead of camping in your own house, go to a lovely hotel for a couple of nights till its done put everything in place over the weekend.

As for John-the-old-git, be extra nice to him just to confuse him.

We had a problem with Ikea trying to deliver a bed - took them four attempts to deliver the right one. MrH complained quite a lot and costed out how much time he'd had to take off work with his hourly rate. We got compensated by a couple of hundred quid which meant we effectively got the bed for free.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it was all worth it, but I am very happy with the house how it is, and the complete nightmarishness of it all has faded - in that if it happened again I think I would cope much better, just by virtue of knowing the process.

I did get very annoyed at the things I had meticulously planned not falling into place - that is part of my control freakery - H was much more laid back and able to accept that a few more days wouldn't make any real difference.

I am with you on the project management front, too

L
xx

Cheers all, have just come back to this.

CB, that's a nice idea but tbh I think we'll both be so stressed that week that adding a further complication of a hotel might be too much, but I'm going to delay the chippy for a bit so he can come in and get straight on it. It's annoying though, cos we have this weekend free to put at least some of it together and now we can't!

Hazel, how did you get the compen? Ikea have said to us that they won't discuss compensation until we've received the delivery so that whatever they offer is seen as full and final settlement.

Lois, you're lucky your H was laid back. Mine is like a bag of cats, frankly at the moment.