A Visit to IKEA ISRAEL

For those of you who have been following this blog for months, you know that Andy and I spent MANY hours in Ikea (Schaumburg, IL) before Aliya purchasing a whole host of items. (I will not re-hash all of that here, as it is too painful a memory!) In any case, months ago, in the heat of assembling all of the items we shipped here from Ikea, we found that they had given us three doors for book case extensions that were the wrong color. Many phone calls to Ikea in the USA finally gave us the solution to return the doors to any Ikea in the U.S., once we got them there, for replacement doors. We were told in no uncertain terms by the store HERE that they would not take them in exchange, as it was THEIR problem there, on the other side of the Atlantic.

Well, Andy and I had the opportunity to visit Ikea yesterday. MY motiviation was that I wanted to eat in their food-court while Andy perused the store for things we might need (HAH! We don't need ANYTHING!)...The thought of eating soup, salmon, bread, etc from the food court was a very enticing activity, since on all my visits to Ikea USA (Lo Aleinu), I would sit there and watch people consuming the inexpensive fare as I sat there with my cup of coffee and home made goodies.

Ah, but now was my chance! We got a ride from a good friend here in Miztpe Nevo (thanks Shlomo!) to the BIG BLUE IKEA in Netanya. On the drive there, Andy asked me if there was anything I wanted to see when we got to the store. I told that I was interested in seeing the EXIT!

Anyways, we decided that since we had nothing to lose, we would at least TRY to get the doors replaced.

THE RESULTS?

The food was great (ok, it was pretty good, but the IDEA of eating there was soooooo good!) and, believe it or not, we were able to get the doors replaced! I went to the customer service department and explained my tale. (She stopped me in the middle to tell me that she did not believe I had made Aliya 5 months ago. I asked her why she would say that, and she said I spoke Hebrew like an Israeli. After feeling very proud of that, I showed her the receipt of the goods we had shipped on our lift a few months back to "prove" we just moved. We began to chat about Olim and Hebrew and some of the obstacles there are and the benefits we get...before I knew it our discussion veered into an Oleh Chadash discussion, putting aside the "door issue" for a few minutes. Once we returned to the matter at hand, she was more than gracious in trying to help out an Oleh. While that was not my "angle" that I had planned on, it certainly ended up working to my advantage! We got the doors replaced (ok, we DID have to pay a small re-stocking fee) and they will be installed by me today.

I must say that it was, all in all, a very pleasant experience! One thing of note...Ikea has many rooms set up as "show rooms" so people can see what their product would look like when used in a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom etc. In the area that they had bedrooms set up, I took a look around for a moment and something struck me as being subtly different from the show-areas in Schaumburg...the show-bedrooms all had Mezuzot! How cool is that!

So, I survived a trip to Ikea and lived to tell about it. I better go and put those bookcase extensions together, before beginning the rest of my day. In the meantime, I will think about the Swedish Meatballs we bought at Ikea to make for Shabbat....I love this country :)