According the Yelp entries prior to my post, Urban Express has an abysmal record. Frankly, I am surprised there is a single review in which it receives anything above one star - though I have my suspicions the positive reviews are PR spin from the company itself. It is disheartening that Ikea continues to associate itself with a service that repeatedly disappoints its customers; in fact, disappoints is an incredibly generous way to put it. Ikea is a successful multinational corporation, so it can obviously afford to rack up a fair number of disillusioned customers with little impact on its bottom line, but I do urge anyone who has stumbled across this review considering an Ikea purchase to reconsider and to go instead with a local business that actually cares about each customer.
I recently had the misfortune of dealing with Ikea's delivery and assembly "service." I ordered $600 worth of bedroom furniture from the Stoughton, MA store and was told that they contract with a "company" called Urban Express who would be both delivering and assembling the furniture on the agreed upon date. I put company in quotes because there is absolutely no way this dysfunctional group of people qualify as a company, and certainly would not be in existence if it wasn't for their deal with Ikea.
My things were supposed to arrive on Tuesday September 3rd between the hours of 9 AM-6 PM (a very convenient window for those of us who have a day job). But since this was the soonest available date, I stayed home from work in order to be there for the delivery. I was told I would receive both a confirmation call the day before (which never happened) as well as a 90 minute courtesy call prior to their arrival. As 4:30 came and went on Tuesday, I called Urban Express asking about the status of my order. To my shock, I was told that my items never actually made it on a truck that morning because of a miscommunication on Ikea's end, so I would have to reschedule for another time. I then proceeded to call Ikea to inquire about what happened and was put on hold for 45 minutes before finally talking to the person who made the mistake. She told me that the next possible date to deliver my furniture was Friday September 6th. Since I was not going to miss another day of work, I told them it would have to be later in the day, so my new window was now 5-9 pm.
Friday morning rolled around and I received a call from Urban Express at 8:30 AM asking if they could deliver the furniture right then instead of the scheduled window. Um no, I am at work 45 minutes away and I'm not coming home for their convenience. So, to my surprise they show up at 5:30 on Friday, (of course there was no courtesy call) but I was just happy to finally receive my furniture. However, this fun saga does not end here.
As the two delivery men were bringing the furniture in my apartment, they announced that they would not be able to assemble it because they had a "very important errand to run that was far too complicated to explain" and clearly much more important than assembling my furniture (which I paid $150 for). After attempting to speak with their manager, they promised to come back in 45 minutes to assemble. Obviously, their word means absolutely nothing so I called back Urban Express and explained the situation and was told they would definitely be back that night. At this point, I knew that was not going to happen so I didn't hold my breath and arranged to pay a friend to put it together.
I was expecting that they would probably show up unannounced in the next few days, but no. Instead I received an automated call Saturday morning asking for my feedback regarding their service. They clearly had no intention of finishing the job...what a shock! Not.
Lessons learned:
1. Ikea's customer service is non-existent and to be frank, a complete joke. I will never shop there again. For anything. Even if it does save me a few bucks, it's not worth the headache of dealing with those people.
2. Urban Express is not a real company, but actually friends of Ikea's employees who are willing to do their dirty work for cheap. Okay, not really but it equates to that. read more