Turns out I once bought some bookshelves there (the famous, cheap ones whose name I don’t care to remember), but they didn’t have them in store, so I had to ask for them to be delivered. When you do that, you have to do two things: one is to pay upfront, and the other is to sign a document that says, literally, that if you’re not home when they arrive, you lose both your money and whatever you bought.

This is ridiculous enough as it is, but it gets better, because they don’t have to be there on the set date, one of the reasons being not having stock by then. And where is the stock? Literally in the store, just before the registers. That’s their warehouse. That means that, if someone comes and buys the same product you wanted and leaves no stock available, you don’t get your already purchased bookshelves and they don’t have to contact you and tell you that.

Think about it: potentially, my bookshelves could have never arrived and that would be perfectly legal, according to the contract.

How did I find out about this? You guessed it: because they missed a couple of dates and I had to wait for them both times all evening (they don’t even give you a timeframe) in an empty flat with no heating.

I’ve never set foot on an Ikea again and I never will.