Kitchen resolved

First day back today after our official summer holiday break. We only took 3 weeks of our annual entitlement, which means I'm alone in the office. I've been dealing with any email crisis that have popped up during my break, but it's good to have some peace and quiet to get things properly organised. And to deal with the important task of updating this blog of course.

 

Our summer break was pretty low keyed this year, which was kind of nice. A chance to catch up with stuff around the home, eat a few good dinners out, and generally unwind. Speaking of stuff around the home, our IKEA kitchen crisis has all worked itself out rather nicely. As a quick recap, we had been buying a few kitchen cabinets as we got paid, over the course of the last year or so, with the view to completely replace our existing kitchen. That is where IKEA is great because it offers the flexibility to purchase in this fashion. Unfortunately for us, just as we were about to purchase our final cabinets, IKEA completely changed their design of kitchens. In their defence, they had been selling the current model for the last 20 years. We just happened to get caught at the end of that 20 year cycle.

 

As one rocket scientist noted earlier, we could have bought everything at once and not had this problem. An absolutely brilliant idea and one that we could never have thought of for ourselves. I guess we can't all be that clever. Anyway, if we all used the 60,000 kronor we carry around in our back pockets to purchase a new kitchen all at once, that would rather negate the major marketing point of IKEA.

 

Back to reality. When we spoke to the head office at IKEA about our problem, they told us that if we delivered everything we had purchased (unopened) back to the store, they would give us a store credit for the purchase value. This sounded a little too good to be true, especially as some stuff, such as whiteware, had been purchased nearly 2 years ago. But we decided to take the punt, loaded everything up into a trailer, and wandered on up the road to our nearest store. The thought was that we would try to give them everything, and see what we came away with. We could not believe our luck when they happily told us that they would accept our entire trailer load of kitchen goods, with full credit on the purchase prices. The whiteware was the biggest bonus for us as it meant that, by purchasing brand new again, the 5 year warranty period would be reset. As I said, a couple of items were nearly 2 years through their warranty period. In theory they "should" have fitted the new kitchen model, but it would have been a risk. Thankfully it's a risk we no longer have.

 

So now we have a new kitchen system which is at the start of a 20 year manufacturing cycle, rather than being at the end. That gives us a lot more security with regard to sourcing replacement parts in the future, and futureproofs the value of the kitchen. Win, win. Now, you would think that it wouldn't get much better than that. But it did. We had purchased maybe 90% of our kitchen previously. With a few cost compromises along the way. Before going to the IKEA store with our old kitchen, we had priced out the total cost for purchasing an entire new kitchen, including new whiteware and a few extra "bling" bells and whistles. After comparing the quoted cost to our newly acquired store credit, we discovered that the new kitchen was actually going to be cheaper to purchase than our 90% purchased old kitchen. In short, we were able to buy a new kitchen, and still have store credit left. Enough to completely remodel one of our spare bedrooms.

 

You don't get a lot of wins in life, at least I don't. So I'm going to savour this one for a while. I'm also going to give a major plug for the good people at IKEA. They didn't have to take all our stuff back and treat us as well as they did. That certainly wouldn't have happened in New Zealand, it simply would have been written off as tough luck and bad timing. IKEA went well above and beyond the call, and I guess that the care they showed towards a repeat customer is part of the reason behind why they continue to be so successful. Well done, IKEA, you've got my vote for life.