- Shipping options disappear and reappear randomly when refreshing the shopping cart
- some items just cannot be bought online for no clear reason (baking spatulas cannot, cooking spatulas can)
- Several packages arrived completely smashed open, and returning them involved bringing them "back" to the nearest IKEA which wasn't particularly fun with 35kg of furniture and no car.
I think there's a pretty clear reason. During normal circumstances, those items are not sold online, because they specifically WANT you to go to a warehouse. If you're looking for a couch or a table, it doesn't matter than much, that's deliberate shopping. The smaller items, those lead to impulse purchases.
Even tried going to Ikea to just get a frying pan, or a bath mat? You'll end up buying 10 more items, because: Hey, it's cheap, and the drive was 30 minutes the wrong way, might as well stock up.
> (...) You'll end up buying 10 more items
This is also sort of a meme. I have taken trips to IKEA maybe 30 times in my life, and I walked out of there with exactly what was on my shopping list (or less, because the items sucked or were out of stock) 95% of the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BUDwj_mXKE&ab_channel=Movie...
If this is how bad it looks from the outside I can only imagine what it’s like working there.
They had converted their entrance and exit "lobbies" in to a zone where carts of items were prepped and after they confirm your order they'd just roll the cart with your order out of the door and leave you to take it from there.
Obviously you have to be prepared for heavier items, etc, but it was fast.
That said, I had some less urgent stuff to get, and ordered online, took 3 weeks to even process/ship (though i knew that in advance)
I got saved by this not long ago. Needed a fridge the next day after moving into a new apartment. Was prepared to spend the day cycling to IKEA, buy the fridge and rent a car, get it all the way home, deliver the car and bike back. But then the website borked and let me choose next day express carry inside for 0,- saving me the trouble of carrying the fridge up stairs, renting a car etc.
still limited to things available in the local ikea, you can not mix "online" available and local available stuff...