I live 10 minutes away from an IKEA, but my kitchen cabinets shipped from somewhere else. (It was at the height of lockdown when the stores were closed so not sure if that was normal or not.) I had used their online design tool and then finalized my purchase with one of their kitchen design people over the phone. They gave me a delivery date and everything was delivered precisely on time. There was a very detailed packing list and absolutely everything I needed was delivered. I was really impressed.

We are a general contracting firm that has done IKEA kitchens in multiple states, and the last few years the deliveries have been a nightmare. IKEA has shipped whole kitchens to the wrong address, with missing parts shipped double and triple times to other wrong addresses. We have also receive items that we did not order ( like multiple doors of the wrong style - obviously someone else’s doors, and multiple 8 foot long counter tops).

Every kitchen has taken multiple store trips to sort out and buy additional pieces, and multiple phone calls to the delivery companies with very mixed results. These jobs have been at Florida and North Carolina stores. Perhaps others are better organized, but I doubt it.

At this time with all the shutdowns, things are no doubt worse. We had an online order for missing parts that were to arrive by the end of May, now saying could be October shipment.

These are items that are already paid for.

IKEA US has bad management and seem to be focused on social justice issues instead of tending to business and taking care of their customers. They clearly are confused about why their revenue has fallen by double digits in the last few years.

Perhaps I should mention that my location is in Canada.

Thank you both for sharing your very different experiences. Will definitely have to think about the risk of all the possible problems.

I live in Montana, so it's closer to drive to Canada than an IKEA. Maybe I should use a Canadian address. 😂

My orders were always correct and on time, including my kitchen.

I had a great experience ordering my kitchen from IKEA and having it delivered to my condo. The freight company kept us informed of the delivery day/time and brought everything up into our condo. Our Ikea is only an hour away so we did make a trip to exchange two doors that had slight 'dings' on the edge (we really would never have noticed the damage but our installer, also from IKEA, insisted that they be perfect.) Also, we had materials (a few hundred dollars worth) that were ordered and that the installer didn't use during the installation so we had to make a trip to return those. An 8 hour trip (16 hours round trip) to make a return would have been very annoying. But that said, my whole experience with design, purchase and installation through IKEA was great.

I also had a good experience - I too only live 15 minutes from an IKEA, but had the kitchen delivered. Delivery was prompt with lots of communication. Out of the hundred+ items I ordered, only 1 item was wrong.

hmmm.... maybe I shouldn't write off that option...