A couple of weeks ago Jordan did this post about his adventures in trying to shop with IKEA. Now, if he had asked anyone in town they would have told him immediately not to bother with IKEA. That they don't give you a quote when dealing with their website, you have to call them. And then they invariably give you some absolutely horrific shipping quote. Simply put, IKEA does not want to do business with people in the arctic. There are plenty of companies who do, but IKEA is not one of them.
However, Jordan didn't know that, so he played the IKEA game. And thank god for it, because IKEA did something to their website so that when he requested a quote for a shipping cost for a sofa, he was told it would cost $1 billion.
No matter what you punched into the website, a new kitchen set or a single lightbulb, the shipping cost was $1 billion.
Now, as a Please Fuck Off and Die type of thing, it was remarkably ballsy and funny for a major company like IKEA to do. When Jordan told me about it, I knew immediately that reporters were going to pick up on the story. If they're going to do a story about a $300 turkey, how the hell can you pass up a $1 billion shipping charge?
And, sure enough, APTN picked up the story. You can see it here. Cathy and I roared, not just because the shipping story is funny (kudos to Wayne for the bit at the airport), but just because Jordan should have his own talk show or something. The cocky little wink to his girlfriend in the story...priceless.
IKEA has already written back and said it was a mistake, they're sorry, that of course the shipping isn't $1 billion. It is, instead, the still quite insane $5,000. I think they should have just stuck with the $1 billion.
I suspect this story is about to go viral. It's hard to predict these things, but Jordan mentioned the Toronto Star is interested in the story, so once they do that and it hits the Canadian Press wire, we're off to the race. That story is going to go to about 50 different countries.
I'd hold out, Jordan. IKEA might just ship you the couch for free to try and curb some of the bad publicity.
Last Five
1. Right here, right now - Fatboy Slim
2. Lucid dreams - Franz Ferdinand
3. Let's dance - David Bowie
4. I'm alright - Kenny Loggins
5. Runnin' out of fools - Neko Case*
5 comments:
Odd. We bought all of our furniture while we were in Inuvik, and almost all of it is from IKEA. Just from my spot here in my blogging chair, I can see two side tables, two lamps, two wall lights, two plastic dressers, a TV stand, two DVD racks, a wall unit, a kitchen table, and six chairs. All from IKEA. I suppose I should count the laminate flooring throughout the house, too, but that was shipped to Yellowknife, not to Inuvik.
I never had a sense that their shipping rates to the western arctic were particularly terrible. It must be a Nunavut thing.
Morning has arrived and my memory has cleared. We DO have the same problem. IKEA either refuses to ship to the NWT or charges ridiculous rates, based on when you call. We got all of our stuff here by having a delivery company pick it up at the Edmonton store.
The shipping charges I remember are from the local trucking company, not from IKEA. We've never actually paid the IKEA rates because they were ridiculous.
Moral of the story: I am sometimes wrong.
Apparently TSC refuses to pick up orders from Ikea (I think because they are not reliable to have the orders ready or have them complete... Ikea is the only company they refuse to pick up orders for).
And I see the Toronto Star article. Jordon has certainly created a lot of humour with this.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/893998--ikea-website-quotes-a-billion-dollars-to-ship-couch-to-iqaluit
The Star did pick it up. Here is the link:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/893998--ikea-website-quotes-a-billion-dollars-to-ship-couch-to-iqaluit?bn=1
My wild imagination leads me to an IKEA co-op organised in protest. If 100 people order the rate would be quite reasonable. Unless of course IKEA starts adding zeros again. :-)
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