Historical version 6 of Ikea (view current version)
IKEA
A Swedish furniture store chain whose eye catching blue and yellow stores can be found in [Wembley]?, Croydon, and Thurrock (Lakeside).
IKEA's furniture is well-priced and of good quality, although you can't order it remotely - you have to actually go to the store, walk around with a form and IKEA golf pencil and write down all the stock numbers for your purchases, before going to the warehouse section of the store to load all your furniture onto a huge trolley in flat-pack form to take to the checkout (almost all IKEA furniture is self-assembly). You're expected to drive it away yourself; otherwise, delivery will cost you £20. For such a pricy service, quality is decidedly patchy, with cock-ups being known to happen. Service is decidedly worse if IKEA happens to put the wrong parts in your flatpack furniture, with replacements requiring numerous phone calls and a lot of time.
IKEA furniture can also be found in the vast majority of Southern Hemisphere households. The lifecycle is:
- Aussies/Kiwis/Saffas arrive to spend a year or two in the UK
- They find a group house and furnish it from IKEA
- They go home after their stay but first sell the IKEA furniture on gumtree.com
- More Aussies/Kiwis/Saffas furnish their group houses with it
- Etc.