News
Police called to Ikea ‘chaos’ as hundreds of drivers queue for click and collect this weekend
Shoppers were not happy.
Police were called to Ikea in Ashton on Sunday after the click and collect service descended into ‘chaos’.
Drivers were waiting in the queue for as long as three hours and were unable to pick up their purchases.
Some frustrated shoppers even became abusive towards staff and police were briefly called to the scene.
Jo Griffin tweeted: “Lots of traffic around Ikea at Ashton Moss.
“People getting out of their cars and shouting abuse and threatening IKEA staff. It’s really no way to behave – they are only trying to keep people safe. Police now on site.”
A spokesperson from Ikea said police were called to an ‘isolated customer issue’ and apologised for the delays which were due to ‘unprecedented demand’.
Sam Scholes told the MEN her and her partner had driven from Preston to pick up the kitchen shelving they had ordered after receiving a text to say it was ready for collection.
They explained that the ‘traffic backed up pretty much from the first roundabout as you come off the M60’.
She said: “My partner rang and they said ‘you might have to wait, there’s nothing else you can do. We sat there waiting patiently for 45 minutes and then it was becoming chaos.
“People were going across the yellow hatchings. Eventually, police came round and pushed their way to the front and parked across the entrance.
“From what I could see the police officer was trying to get people to move on.”
An IKEA spokesperson said: “We are really sorry for the disruption at IKEA Manchester today.
“This was caused by unprecedented demand during these exceptional times where life at home has never been more important.
“We can confirm that police were called to deal with an isolated customer issue and have now left the site.
“We have been doing everything that we can to serve customers on this incredibly busy Sunday and we have increased staff capacity in our store to manage the click & collect service.
“We’d like to thank our customers for their patience and for shopping with IKEA.”