This post will focus on their terrible customer service at this branch. (Didn't have the food here though know its good at other branches, and of course the furniture offerings are the same as other branches. I have enjoyed the experience at the Philadelphia IKEA and have generally been a happy customer previously.)
We initially went to our closest IKEA in Philadelphia, but because the item we wanted was out of stock, we went to the Conshohocken store. We saw in the computer that the item was in stock, and were able to pay for it, and were told that it would be in the furniture pick up area. You can imagine that all this took a fair bit of time and standing in lines. Because it was extremely busy, we asked if we could come back later and the staff was supportive of that idea. So we went to another neighboring store for about an hour, came back and saw that the item was in the "ready for pickup" cue on the monitor, and then went upstairs to look at one other item in the IKEA. When we came back down and got to the front of the line to pick it up, we were told that the item was actually not in their stock (or they couldn't find it), and there was nothing they could do. We were speaking to the manager of customer service Diedra, who gave a very insincere apology, blamed us for leaving the area so they couldn't tell us this earlier, and seemed completely disinterested in righting the situation in any way with a coupon or any other discount, not even a symbolic gesture. We asked to speaker to her manager, so we talked to the store manager, who also did not have any ideas on how to make things better. We (not they) offered the idea of buying the floor model with the As-Is discount, suggesting that usually the floor models go for 50% off; they (seemingly begrundgingly) agreed, but said they could not commit to the level of discount. I get that they are not the authorities to price the As-Is section, but the manner in which they communicated this and basically stated they had no interest in even trying to suggest a discount was adding to our frustration.
The piece of furniture was unbolted from the display, and the As-Is section manager immediately priced it at 50% off. Despite some minor difficulty with the label and spending more time trying to get the item to ring up in order to pay for it, we finally did and were ready to dissamble it to go home. When we went to grab what we thought was an empty box next to where the unit was displayed, we found that there was indeed a boxed version sitting there (albeit a different color). We found this to show to Diedra, who responded by basically saying 'well I already apologized, there isn't anything else I can do.'
I get that there can be inventory mistakes. That part is frustrating, but hey it happens. I am not even one who believes that the customer is always right. But the utter disregard the customer service department has to serving the customers is pretty absurd. There are really easy ways to make customers feel heard and valued (don't blame the customer for your inventory issues,' at least try to make your apologies sound sincere; even a $10 cafeteria voucher can be something to offer wronged customers and basically be free to you - better than absolutely nothing). it shouldn't be up to the customers to come up with ideas (ie in this case, buy the store model). I am surprised that such a large branch (the headquarters in fact!) does not have better training in customer service, or selection process for their managers.
Everyone else in the store - the As-Is manager, the cashier, the woman who helped unbolt the floor model - was great and perfectly nice. It was the customer service department that was The Worst at customer service. read more