Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Ikea Happy Hour

A few weeks after we moved to London, I was looking online for an Ikea so we could get some household stuff. I found one, and happened to check the actual store page, where I saw that they were having a 'Happy Hour' during the month of September. Every weekday, between 6pm and 7pm, there were different specials in the store. Wednesday's special said, 'Whatever you spend in the restaurant you get off products'. To me it sounded like a great deal, but in my mind, I figured there would be a catch. Regardless, we had to go, so one Wednesday night we took the tube up to the Wembley Ikea. I asked the girl at the front desk what the happy hour meant and how it worked and she had no idea, so she told me to go to the Customer Service desk. I went there and the lady didn't know, so she asked her supervisor and it was true...she said you have to save your receipt from the restaurant and show it to the cashier who could then take off the amount from your total. The only catch was you had to eat in the restaurant and pay for your items between 6pm and 7pm and by the time we found out, it was 6:40pm!

Kai and I figured the best way to do it was to grab all our stuff, then buy our food and then Kai would wait with the food, I would go pay, and then come back up to the restaurant and we could eat. Seriously, it was the fastest I have ever gotten through an Ikea since we were on a time crunch, but by the time we got to the restaurant and paid, there was about 4 minutes left. So I rushed down, got in the line, and got to the cashier exactly at 7pm. After showing her my restaurant receipt, she said she had no idea what I was talking about with the happy hour and that she couldn't do anything. I asked her to talk to her supervisor, who also said she didn't know what was going on, so I just paid, and then went back to Customer Service.

I found the lady who I had talked to and she gave me a refund, so it ended up being a great deal! We spent about 45 pounds, and got 15 pounds worth of food (which is a lot at Ikea).

So that is part 1. Part 2 is funnier. Our first Happy Hour experience had been the first week of September and by the last week of September, we needed a few more things and since we knew how nice the Happy Hour was, we figured we would go back one last time. Being smart, we got there exactly at 6pm, got our food. This time, we were apparently more daring because our total came out to be about 25 pounds -- kind of ridiculous for 2 people! Then we went to go pay. Apparently the rules had changed since our first experience because now you needed to have some sort of voucher printed and signed off, so the cashier sent me back upstairs to the restaurant to get the voucher.

Long story short, I had to talk to 5 different people before I made it back to our cashier. So our cashier goes to discount our food off our bill, and surprise...our stuff totaled a little over 26 pounds, so at the end of the day, we paid like 1 pound! I felt so embarrassed...especially when the cashier's eyes got big and noticed how much we ate! He looked at us and was like 'You really ate your way through your goods!'

Anyways, maybe you had to be there to get it, but we definitely made our moneys worth from Ikea...not too shabby!

2 comments:

  1. Way to go Nikki! Between your shopping savy and Kai's ability to eat... IKEA never stood a chance! :)

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  2. That's awesome... I still don't get how it works but how annoying that you had to talk to so many people about it. THey need to get with the program. AT least they speak english there. Can you imagine living in a foreign country that didn't speak English for 4 months? me either... and we went there once to get sheets and stuff and totally got lost and we didn't know there was a shuttle bus that took you to and from the underground. i love ikea.

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