To give credit where credit is due, IKEA has finally agreed to reimburse me for their shitty, faulty bed.

And to them I say….thanks.

9 days after my last communication, IKEA has continued to ignore me. What the hell kind of company simply ignores a customer who is rightly outraged at their defective product and miserable customer service?

I started to compose a new email when I just stopped. They’re not interested in what I have to say. Which is why I’m taking back to the blog, because you’re listening. And you’re so much more important than they are. The more people who know how poorly they operate, the better. I hope IKEA has PR people checking the internet and they see this. Because they should be embarrassed. They should be mortified at how their company represents itself. I’ve been talking to people all over New York City about this, and they’re as bewildered as I am. You’re losing customers IKEA. I got a big mouth, and you’ve pissed me off enough that I’m not going to stop running it until things are made right.

When I made my first IKEA purchase for my new home last month I was thrilled. A new bed! The Fjellse model to be exact. I went to IKEA Brooklyn and bought it, along with the necessary support slats. I put it together with ease.

Imagine my surprise when less than one month later, at 5am, the main crossbeam of the bed abruptly shattered, sending me tumbling to the ground in a shower of terrified panic and splintered wood. Important sidenote: I’m not obese. There was no reason for the wood to break. When the bed is put together correctly and the inhabitant is of normal weight, for the product to shatter out of nowhere is completely insane.

So I calmly did what made sense to me. I photodocumented  the entire incident before calling the IKEA hotline. Have you seen my pictures? I put them on Facebook, for the whole internet to see.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.613538262363.2100449.12201992&type=3&saved#!/media/set/?set=a.613538262363.2100449.12201992&type=1

I spoke to a representative who told me to email my story, along with the photographs, to their customer service department and I would be contacted shortly thereafter.

The IKEA rep who contacted me days later was BEYOND rude. I, a normally calm and relaxed person, nearly flew into a rage.  Here’s what I was told:

*Despite photodocumenting the entire incident, I was not believed. The only way to obtain a refund for my fault bed (whose breaking, it was acknowledged, was not my fault) was to bring the entire frame back to Brooklyn. To do that, I would have to take a $50 cab ride. I explained that the cab ride would cost as much as the frame itself. I asked if there could be a guarantee that I would be reimbursed for the cab ride, to which the customer service rep rudely responded “We’re not having this conversation over the phone.” I was speechless. How dare she?

*Getting to IKEA Brooklyn is difficult but not impossible via public transit. It’s 2 trains and a bus away for me. I offered bring the much smaller broken pieces of the bed back for the refund. This was deemed unacceptable. They also refused to come pick up the broken bed from my apartment. I offered to meet them halfway by coming to Brooklyn with the broken pieces and it was thrown back in my face.

Where is all this now? I’ve received 4 indifferent emails from 4 different customer service reps, refusing to budge. I’m so enraged that a company that claims to be about creating homes in small urban spaces can be so unmoving when it comes to the problems of city living! I know this can’t be the first time this has happened. IKEA Brooklyn knows it caters largely to the NYC population, who don’t have access to cars, and couldn’t possibly transport large items back to them via subway.

So here’s what I say to you, friends. IKEA is a crock. Especially IKEA Brooklyn. I need your help to get the word out about this, how terrible their practices are, and the rudeness of their customer service. Please tell your friends who are looking for furniture to try elsewhere: Amazon.com, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Container Store, Local furniture stores. I ended up getting a new, better, bed from Sleepys. Look anywhere else for your needs. IKEA will completely hang you out to dry. I will never, EVER use them for anything again, and I encourage you to do the same.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.613538262363.2100449.12201992&type=3&saved

I write to you from a small coffee shop (with unparalleled lattes and cheese scones) at the foot of the Appalachian mountains. It’s beautiful. Looking up into the fog drifting slowly down the foothills, I keep thinking that I should be hiking through those mountains, stretching mind and body, rather than doing lessons plans, and getting distracted by blogging.

I’m thinking of taking a Mulligan on my 20s (my 29th birthday is next month, and though I’m not technically out of the woods yet, I feel emotionally as if I’m already 30, so that’s that) and hitting the reset button on my life. In one way, I’m fortunate to feel like there’s so much possibility to begin anew – not everyone feels that comfortable and strong in their ability to start again in a new place, with another job, meeting new people, and so on. Now, this isn’t 100% by any means – I still plan on heading back to New York when my contract here ends and seeing if we (NYC and I) can fall back in love again. I don’t think my ex-boyfriend and I can find that though. That chapter is closing. Not sure about my job either. There are a lot of skeletons in New York’s closet. But there are so many great things too. The city, for one. I’m never bored. The amazing network of friends I’ve got there. Theatre. Movies. There’s so much good.

But the idea of a clean start is so appealing to me. I just can’t get it out of my head….I guess we’ll have to see. I think I’d have to do a bit of travelling to find that place….the place I’d be happy ushering out my 20s and welcoming in the next stage…

Now onto the generosity portion of this post. I’m typing from a computer (a netbook, technically) that a dear friend simply gave me out of the kindness of his heart! (That and the fact that he had several lying around.) My friend Chris, who is married to my dear and wonderful friend Meghan, writes software, and is kind of a huge deal in his field. Subsequently, there is top of the line technology scattered all over their flat. So when I was there last week for a drink, he asked if I knew anyone who needed a laptop. Long story short, this little machine is a beauty. Fast, lightweight, perfect. It’s like having a Pegasus at the Kentucky Derby. I’m still very humbled by the generosity shown me.

No. Apparently not.

That seems to be the case with Rimmel London 60 Second Dry nail polish, currently smudging up my digits in shade #230, Portobello Pink.

If you say you’re going to dry in 60 seconds (and especially if I allot you five minutes as a precaution) then you’d better do it, goddamn it! I paid 3 dollars of my very pathetic salary to have nails the color of a 1980s Malibu hooker! I want my money’s worth!

Did I also mention that my boyfriend and I are going through a patch so rough I’m relatively certain it’s over? And that I’m completely shattered about it?

But let’s keep this one to nail polish. I can’t talk much about the other one. I’m not there yet. I bought a fancy nail polish to wear to a dear friend’s wedding this past weekend and was hugely pleased with the results. That’s right, I dropped $20 on freaking nail polish, just because it was pretty and unusual and from a fancy French company. My nails looked nice. I’m ok with the decision. Other decisions? I’m not so sure.

This new one-sheet, for the final installment of the Harry Potter franchise, is truly the epitome of badassery. Allow me to simply draw your eye to the lower portion of the image, where the force of Dame Maggie’s magic throwin’ has caused copious, Dexter-esque blood spatters to scatter across her posters.

That’s right, folks. Classically trained actors don’t fuck around. BLOOD SPATTERS? Also, the strapline “It All Ends” is not only referring to the series conclusion, but also to your life if you cross Dame Maggie.

B and I have been friends since the womb. No, for reals. Our parents are also friends, and our mothers were pregnant with us at the same time. Even though I sneakily escaped from Uterus City a month before she did, I’ve always felt that we were really just sisters from separate gene pools. We even share the same pale, dark, good looks We also share a love for romantic comedies, books geared towards teenagers, and the need to plan things in advance.

One of my favorite memories of college was driving from New York to Boston to visit her at school. We hung out, walked around the pond (where I pocketed a rubber duck, which I still have somewhere) and watched Legally Blonde in her room. And I got a sweatshirt from her school – I collect uni sweatshirts, it’s a weird thing I like – gave her a hug, and was on my way. It was so much fun. That’s the kind of silly, relaxing stuff you can do with a best friend, but because they mean so much to you, and time with them is precious, even the ordinary stuff becomes the kind of thing you remember forever.

Some friends drift apart with adulthood. You move to a new state, get a job, get married. Your priorities change. Not us. We actually drifted closer, if that’s possible. I’m like that piece of debris from the sinking Titanic and she is Kate Winslet, holding on to me. We drift together through arctic waters. Leonardo DiCaprio? No thanks. We don’t need him. We’re drifting just fine, thank you very much.

Though B works in a high-powered, intense job, and is happily married and expecting her first child (yay!) she always makes time for me, which means so much. Right now, my dad is really sick…again. And she’s offered multiple times to fly hours (whilst pregnant) just to see me and be there in support. Not a lot of friends do that in sincerity. But she does. And we’ll do that for each other for the rest of our lives. Through all those big growing up moments. It’s nice to know you don’t have to do it alone. And that someone else will always want to make plans with you.