Kitchen Nightmares

Today is my first day in my new kitchen.  

They say moving house is the most stressful thing you can do in your life. This is not true.  Ripping out your kitchen and fitting a new one is.

It has taken two men six days to fit.  It should have taken no more than four.  

I live in a small, old house.  This meant that there was no room to move all the kitchen "stuff" from the kitchen and store it elsewhere.  It was instead piled up mostly in the dining area of the kitchen but also in a small sun porch.

I purchased the kitchen from Ikea and the amount of mistakes on their part so far beggars belief. We were supplied the wrong sized units, had units missing, doors not the correct size, not to mention shelving, legs and handles missing. We were even given parts of units.  It appears that they dispatched units based on two different kitchen plans - the first original draft and the final one.

It was so confusing that even the kitchen planners in Ikea could not figure out what had gone wrong.  The trouble is that Ikea is the DIY equivalent of budget supermarket giants Lidl and Aldi.  If there are items out of stock as happened initially, hard luck, you have to go back to get them .  You deal with literally dozens of staff so there is no follow through.  The communication between departments is virtually non-existant.

Did they handle the complaint well?  Not well enough to my mind.  They ended up refunding me the initial delivery cost.  But this was small compensation for the 5 trips to the shop (an hour's drive both ways).  Plus the cost of having to pay men for six days instead of four.  Not to mention the waste of time trying to figure out how to make a giant jigsaw with vital pieces missing.

Incidentally the unit they neglected to provide at all was given to me today minus legs.....after they knew about the original cock up.

Would I go back to Ikea again? Certainly not.  Would I recommend anyone buy a kitchen there?

Do yourself a favour and go to somewhere they value their customers.