Sink Saga...

We finally found a couple of freestanding sinks, for a reasonable price, that looked OK in the Ikea catalogue...

[If you don't mind spending thousands of pounds, it's quite easy to find nice sink units, but we want something to last until we can get around to fitting a kitchen, so something that costs more than the whole kitchen will seems a bizarre choice, so "No!" to John Lewis of Hungerford and your ilk.]

We live reasonably close to Ikea in Croydon, so went along to have a look at the sinks "in the flesh", and hopefully buy one to take to France on our last trip.

They had two of the three possibles on display, neither of which we liked: one looked like a catering sink, but felt a bit feeble [industrial looks without industrial build quality; not what we were aiming for!], and the other one didn't have any kind of rim/lip to stop water overflowing [having occasionally managed to soak the floor using sinks with a rim/lip, I wanted that "safety" feature"].

The second sink we just didn't really like either - the cupboard you could add wasn't very aesthetically pleasing, and added to the cost, so that was also a "No".

Before setting off for Wembley or any other store I thought I would check availability, so that if we liked the third (as yet unseen) sink we could buy one there & then.

The website "availability checker" showed quite a few of both the sink and the base in stock.

Being somewhat paranoid (and wanting to avoid a wasted journey), I telephoned the store to check that they were in stock & we could just come and collect a set if we liked the look of the combo...

A very helpful lady said "Yes!" no problem.

What she really meant was: "You will get to the store, decide you like the item, copy down the location, but need to queue up for nearly an hour to speak to the one kitchen assistant working [to find the location for the waste, which wasn't shown]. You will be told by that assistant that the location in the warehouse you have copied down doesn't exist, and that you need to speak to someone down in the warehouse to find the correct location, but yes they are in stock".

She seemed a bit frustrated that this process was something she'd explained frequently, and customers who weren't happy probably had bent her ear on more than one occasion!

Another, though much shorter wait, we learned from the (equally helpful) chap in the warehouse that yes, both items were in stock, but we could only have one of them!

We could collect a sink - if he called through to his colleagues in the outside store, we could pick up the sink in 30-40 minutes...

The base was in an "air location" [a high shelf] that could only be accessed by the forklift driver - a process that they weren't allowed to do whilst there were customers in the store.

Fair enough: health & safety requirements seem sensible, but why not advise customers [who have taken the trouble to find out if they can take an item away before schlepping to North London] that they have to order the base one day for collection the next day?

So, we said "Please will you ask them to get one down for us" and "Where will it be when we come back tomorrow to collect it?"...

The helpful assistant said that the best they could do was ask the forklift driver to leave it near their desk, IF they got it down. [There seemed to be a lot of doubt whether the request would be actioned or ignored.]

[Again, we got the impression the staff suffers at the hands of frustrated customers who can't just buy items, and this wasn't a one-off "glitch"!]

Could we have our name put on it to reserve it?

No.

What's to stop someone else taking it?

Nothing.

Well, we asked for them to get one down...

Next day I spoke again with the helpful lady in Rotherham to see if I could contact the warehouse desk to see if the base was waiting there for us to collect.

I muttered a bit about the air location, and why couldn't they let us know, but it wasn't her fault, so I just asked for the name of the CEO. [No-one in store could tell me the name of the store manager, or the CEO - at that point I thought the problem was inefficiency at Wembley not Ikea's "system".]

The lady told me the name, so I could write to him [turns out he left last September - I Googled the spelling to find that he'd moved on], and said she couldn't contact the warehouse desk, but she or one of her colleagues would call me back, when I explained about the doubt whether the base would have been taken down to floor level.

She did say she could try to organise delivery, but that was going to be over £70, so I thought, "let's have one last go at collecting it first"...

Later that day I received a call from another lady in Rotherham: there were no bases in stock in Wembley, and no plans to get any more.

I didn't know what to say!

[I consulted the online availability checker the next day - which was still showing the same level of stock as when I first looked, so I don't know whether the people in store were misinformed/lying, or whether the lady from customer services at head office was.]

It was all a bit frustrating - not knowing whether they would have a sink anywhere near London, and if so whether I could collect one.

I never think moaning achieves anything, but I still have a moan anyway because it gets it out of my system!

But this time it was productive - I was telling mum about the Ikea "system" [how can anyone run a business that way?], and saying we'd have to keep looking on eBay till I found one we liked & could afford.

She asked what we wanted, and I explained that we just wanted a self-supporting sink - we didn't want to have to buy a base cabinet, a length of worktop, a jigsaw (to cut the hole in the worktop) and take it to France to assemble it all - so that we didn't have to take the washing up to the laundry room, wash it & bring it back.

Bad enough having to wash up!!

I didn't care what it looked like, as long as it wasn't too expensive; we're planning to think about kitchen layout/style when we are in situ and our heads aren't too full of all the other decisions...

And we've coped without a kitchen for four years already, so another year or two (or five!) won't matter!

Mum said "We've got an old sink in the shed; would you like that?"

"YES!!" [Please]

After measuring the sink and the car, it all looked manageable, so we did the belated Christmas present run (swapped gifts that we never exchanged last year), collected the sink and had another of our 36-hour round trips!

Some Vim powder, a bit of elbow grease and it all looked much better!

It's a catering sink (so we've got the industrial look, but this time with the build quality), with a small hand sink to the side.

The basin is far too large (would have been perfect in the laundry!!), but we can upturn one washing up bowl & put another one on top and it will be great!

M. Huguenot from Schwartz didn't seem fazed by it not having a waste so we're keeping our fingers crossed that it will be fitted next time we visit...

Having the sink in place also means we can have the mini immersion installed too, so it will be luxury!

[The run from the existing immersion heater meant we were having to run the tap for a minute or so each time we wanted hot water - a complete waste - so we are having a tiny one under the sink]