Dear IKEA,

My sweet IKEA, filled with wonderfully cheap and oh so stylish crap to fill my house and heart, how you have failed me. My love for you has been tarnished, I'm afraid, and who knows when I will have the strength, nay, the patience to return to you again.

It all started so innocently. We wanted some outdoor chair pads - you had said outdoor chair pads. We wanted two - you only had one in the color we wanted. So we bought the one, thinking we'd buy another when more came in. Well, that was before we learned that you won't order more until ALL the colors have been sold out. Lame. So I returned for what should have been a simple procedure: return the one I bought, and buy the blue ones you did have in stock.

The purchasing of the new ones went without a hitch. Unless you count the part where I had to hunt around for them because they were not in the same spot they previously had been in. But I prevailed, and moved on. I loaded them into the car and went back in to the store to return the lone green one previously purchased. That's went everything went all to hell.

I took a number and waited patiently only to be told that I couldn't return it because I didn't have the same card it was purchased with. Even though these debit cards went to the same account, you still wouldn't do the return. I think your policy is very inconvenient to your customers. It was my husband who had made the purchase, but I, his wife, couldn't make the return. It's a stupid policy. Yet, one I can handle. And I would have handled it just fine if I had only waited for the 9 minutes your friendly customer service sign, "We're thinking about you and your time!", told me was the longest I should expect to wait to be helped. But I did not wait a mere 9 minutes, did I, IKEA. Oh no, I did not.
I was told I was screwed after a 40 minute wait.
Here, let me put that in all caps so you can read it better.

FORTY MINUTES. I waited FORTY @*%#!@*%#! MINUTES!!

WITH A TWO YEAR OLD.

The other people waiting may have gotten a bit of a show from me. Your shopping cart may have a new dent in it from being slammed into a large pole, accidentally, of course. And the punk kid you hired to do returns may have had a few choice words thrown at him. And for that one, I apologize. Because those words should have gone to the incompetent airhead of a woman who had been doing the returns, (in between chatting it up with other customers as if we were all being paid by the hour to sit there), very, very slowly by herself and not calling for help until some of us had already been there for 30 minutes. And to the other two employees who merely shook their heads and gave a look of confusion and slight disgust at being interrupted from their chit-chat when the poor woman with 100 little kids waiting next to me dared asked them if there was anyone else who could help. She had been waiting a half hour and her poor son was about to pee his pants. She did not deserve the dirty look those stupid girls gave her behind her back. That's the kind of top notch service you get when you hire teenagers who are only there because their parents told them they'd take their car away if they didn't get off their butts and get a job for the summer. Good call Ikea.

The incompetent airhead kept saying they were short handed. And then the two guys in the back would stand there for awhile taunting us. "Look at us, we have nothing to do and we're not going to help you! Nah nah na nah nah!"

Coolest customer service ever.

In hindsight, I realize the huge mistake I made was buying the new pads before returning the one I had. I was offered store credit for it, and if I had done the return first, I could have taken the store credit and used it to purchase the new ones. I made the mistake of "running in quick to see if they have more and then I can just buy another green one and be done!". But not only did they not have a green one, they only had two blue ones left and that was it, nothing else. I was not going to take the chance of them getting swiped up while I went back out to the car. Clearly, Ikea wanted to teach me that from now on, I am to bring my return in to the store with me first.
Or, that it's run by the devil.

Lessons learned, IKEA. Lessons learned.