Two days after purchasing the furniture, I received confirmation that the units had been partially disassembled and shipped, and that we could expect delivery the following afternoon/evening. For the second time, we changed our schedules to accommodate the delivery, but the truck was about 3 hours late. After 9 pm at night, while my young children should have been sleeping upstairs, the deliverymen were hurriedly dropping several pieces off in our basement. Imagine our surprise when that weekend, we started trying to put the units together and found that several pieces – originally present in the units we purchased – were not delivered and were now missing.

We called the IKEA store and waded through the IVR system to leave a message. When someone called us back, it took a long while to get to the right person, explain the situation, and convince them that the shipment was in fact missing pieces we were supposed to have. (What finally convinced her is that she claimed that she personally had included the manual and all the parts – and I was able to assure her that there was NO manual in the items we'd received.) She took a partial list of what was missing (without the manual, we weren't sure about everything) and said she'd look for the parts and get back to us. We never heard from anyone and eventually we had to call again; this time, they told us that they didn't find the parts, but that if we gave them a parts list, they would start assembling them and get them out to us.

We confirmed that we couldn't assemble a parts list because we didn't have a manual or any documentation, and they said they'd fax us something. When we received the fax, it was product information for a different item and we called again. They said they'd fax the right documents, but they never did. Eventually we had to go on the IKEA website, download and print out all of the user documentation for the product line we purchased, and then figure out which units in that line we'd purchased. Then we had to go downstairs and painstakingly compare the assembly directions (which are all pictures, very little writing) to the items we had, and make a list of all the missing parts. It was not easy, but when we were done, we again called IKEA at College Park and gave them the list over the phone. And then we waited. Every few days, my husband would call and leave a message.

Each time he reached a live person, he was assured he would get a call back. We never did. We also called the main IKEA call center a few times, and each time, they said they'd pass our message on to the store. Still nothing.

Meanwhile, our entire basement was in disarray because four separate pieces of furniture were lying about half-assembled. The children could not play down there and we had to cancel our holiday plans for having people over. Weeks passed. Finally, exasperated, I called the main IKEA customer call center and demanded that they escalate my call to a manager. A nice supervisor I'll call Ellen came on the line, listened to my story, and said that she would look into it and call me back.

She took down the missing parts info, and also gave me a case number and her direct extension. She didn't call back, and I left her three more messages in the next few days. We also sent the missing parts list to a customer service e-mail address we found online. We got two e-mails back saying the issue had been forwarded to the store and that we'd be hearing back. We didn't.

The final straw for me came when we received a third e-mail from IKEA, this time directly from Ellen. It was a forward from an internal IKEA address; the original e-mail was an inappropriate and somewhat offensive Obama joke that had been circulated internally at IKEA and somehow got forwarded to us from this certain employee. I was livid. I called Ellen's direct extension again and left another message, but then also called the main customer service line and asked again to be escalated to a supervisor. I gave the person a brief history of my ridiculous case and mentioned the e-mail, after which she asked me a lot of questions and then transferred me over to her supervisor (whose name was listed on the recipient list of internal IKEA addresses that received the forwarded joke in the first place!). I'll call this man Ely, and he was very apologetic.

Ely promised to take care of the missing parts issue that day, and to look into the e-mail (which I forwarded to him at his request). He called back later that day to tell me that he'd spoken to someone at the College Park IKEA who would be assembling the parts and sending them to me the next day if possible, but definitely the following day at the latest. Of course I was skeptical, and sure enough, later that evening I received a call from a woman at the IKEA College Park who said she'd "looked everywhere" for the missing parts and she could only find one of the several items we needed. I asked her what we needed to do to get the rest of the items, and she said she'd keep looking. Since more that TWO MONTHS had now passed since the purchase, I knew that "keep looking" was not a viable solution, so I again asked what else we could do. Again she mentioned that she could keep looking, but I pressed on the matter and finally she said I should check with other stores to see if they had the parts. I was astounded.

I asked if they didn't have a central repository for parts, where they could just order what was needed, but she swore they did not. I expressed my extreme dissatisfaction and she offered to have her supervisor call me the next day. (Surprisingly, the supervisor did not call.)

Angrily I left a voicemail message and an e-mail for Ely, telling him the latest craziness. He called back the next day saying that my having to call other stores was unacceptable, and he was going to handle this himself without involving the College Park store any longer. He said he would personally get in touch with the Chicago warehouse that has all the parts, give them the parts list, and have them assemble and ship the items. He called back later the same day to say that was done and the shipment would go out the next morning. He promised that he would call back with a routing/tracking number. He said I'd have the parts by Friday (two days later).