£50 IKEA delivery charge!

[hardheadedwoman]

I needed to order something from IKEA and can’t get to a store. The order was £65 for a flat packed desk

Upon checking out the delivery charge was £40 for 4 working days or £50 for 3.

Aibu that this is shameless profiteering given many people are avoiding the shops at the moment?

[movingonup20]

Our local man and van service picks up for £25 - try yours?

[satnighttakeaway]

Delivery of furniture is always expensive, nothing to do with covid and no reason and shopshould be delivering at a loss. The drivers still need to be paid and the costs of the lorries

You need to look at the total cost, is its cheaper than the alternatives it doesn't really matter how they split it up does it?

[WhereverIGoddamnLike]

It's not profiteering. They have always charged those sorts of pieces for delivery because they dont like delivering. Their set up is that you go to store and buy their stuff because it's cheaper and easier for them than dealing with logistics.

[Wolfff]

I bought several items earlier this year. Yes, it’s annoying but the alternative would be to make a couple of journeys in our little car with manoeuvring heavy items upstairs. At least they brought them to our flat door. For £35 that was OK.

We also paid £50 for a fast delivery of a washing machine from John Lewis.

It’s not profiteering, you just have to pay more for a service if you want a (fast) delivery.

[DobbyTheHouseElk]

Weirdly, it’s cheaper if you order a home delivery from the store. It’s more expensive if you order direct from the website

[WotWouldCJDo]

You just don't understand their business model.

[DGRossetti]

Sounds like a business opportunity for a local person+van to offer to collect and deliver to you for £25. If they could get their shit together they could maybe collect 5 things in one go for a nice £125 gross take for a morning ?

[LightasaBreeze]

They always charge about that which is fine if you are buying a quantity of heavy stuff but expensive if a small item but it is not just because of Covid it is always about that price

[ClaireP20]

I know! I was going to order a bookcase for less than £50...and they also wanted me to pay £40 delivery!! Of course I didn't order..I suspect they'll have to change this if they want to survive post covid..

[LightasaBreeze]

Actually if you are buying something like 3 Pax wardrobes then it works out quite cheap

[dudsville]

OP, I needed a thing I would normally think I could get quite cheaply from IKEA, a shoe storage bench. The IKEA one was certainly cheap, but delivery was high and I knew the quality would be questionable - a bench needs to be sturdy! I went to etsy and found a person who makes this item, it looks really sturdy (not chip board!), at half the price and for a £15 delivery fee. Its also bespoke to my exact measurements. We used another etsy seller earlier in the year for bookshelves, again half the price, sturdier than anything, amazing quality and reasonable delivery (2x big really heavy items for £60). If you can provide your measurements and needs those sellers can make a good sturdy item.

[Katiepoes]

Look at it the way my husband did when we had garden furniture delivered - is it worth 50 euro not to have to go to the store in person? For him the answer is always yes 😁

As others said though the trick is to try and have a lot delivered in one go. IKEA are not Amazon and have never tried to be, delivery is not part of their model.

[baubling]

If you are buying several wardrobes or an entire kitchen, then you wouldn't want to collect it yourself, so for something like that, then the delivery charge is reasonable. It pays the warehouse staff's wages and goes towards the cost of the lorry, driver, fuel etc.

They aren't going to want to charge you £3.50 to drive a van on a great long round trip to deliver one item.

[Whatsnewpussyhat]

Always been this way because furniture needs 2 person delivery. Sometimes they do half price delivery though.

I'm due a delivery of smaller items that was £4 but they are sending that by courier, not a large van/truck.

[knittingaddict]

It's the furniture ie big items that are so expensive. You can order things like bedding for a much smaller cost. For instance I've recently ordered some sheets and a couple of drona boxes and was charged £4 for delivery.

[Chloemol]

They have always charged for delivery

[DynamoKev]

@DGRossetti

Sounds like a business opportunity for a local person+van to offer to collect and deliver to you for £25. If they could get their shit together they could maybe collect 5 things in one go for a nice £125 gross take for a morning ?

Hard to break even at that rate.

[TheFairyCaravan]

It’s always expensive to have stuff delivered from IKEA. It’s not a new thing

[bridgetreilly]

They aren't a delivery company. They don't want to deliver - it's not just the actual delivery van, it's the staff having to pick the items from the shelves, pack them up etc. That's not their business model.

[phoenixrosehere]

I thought delivery price was by distance. We paid £35 for our superking bed and it included drawers and a headboard with storage and they placed it in our third floor master bedroom. It still cost us about £500 less than our queen size divan bed from a bed store.*

[UnlimitedUnspecific]

I ordered my DS a desk last year with delivery of £3.95 - admittedly not a huge desk, but not a kids one either.
I was pleasantly surprised.
Then I wanted to buy myself something similar more recently, and the delivery was so expensive I couldn't justify it.
They used to have a system where your distance from the store affected the price, i.e. the further away you lived the more delivery was. But in my case, the 2 desks with wildly differing delivery charges were to the same house. Only difference being a few months.

[kungfupannda]

Don't think it is about distance, but the type of delivery (if it isn't bulky, it can be sent by courier).

That might be it - it's a play kitchen and accessories, along with a couple of other smallish things, so not a 2 man delivery job.

[DGRossetti]

Hard to break even at that rate.

It was just an example. I leave it to the wannabe Bransons to take time out from filling in applications for billions to do the fine details.

[RedToothBrush]

Ikea delivery charges and collection charges are ridiculous.

It puts me off buying from them at the moment. I will eventually get around to it, but with the additional charges.

Besides that, I would much rather by in person and ensure the goods aren't damaged whilst getting them, because if you think the queue to get in the shop is horrendous, you should see the customer service queue. OMG.

I've been told people were queuing for hours for customer service pre lockdown because they hadn't the capacity or space to do more than a few customers per hour.

Just no thanks.

[safariboot]

Certainly paid nowhere near that much to have a desk chair delivered earlier this year. And I wouldn't have, I would have bought from somewhere else.

It might be "normal practice" for Ikea, but in 2020 it's adapt or die. High delivery prices when stores are shut, or even open but customers are concerned about the disease, will be unpopular.