Ikea tells disabled shopper: Pay £10 for help
A DISABLED woman unable to walk through an Ikea store was told she would have to pay for staff to find a product.
Olivia Cole had made a 20-mile trip to return some faulty wardrobe hinges, and was offered a refund.
However customer services then told the 23-year-old – who suffers muscle damage which limits how far she can walk – to get a new bag of hinges from a shelf in the store.
When Miss Cole asked if someone could fetch the item for her, a sales assistant said she would be charged £10 for the help.
Miss Cole, from Middlewich in Cheshire, was left ‘really upset’ by their response and had to ask her mother Caroline to retrieve the hinges for her.
Mrs Cole, 49, said: ‘She has recurrent compartment syndrome which she has had twice in her leg, leaving her with damage to her muscle. She can’t put her foot flat to walk.
‘She does have a wheelchair as she can’t walk far but wasn’t using it at Ikea as she didn’t think she’d need it as we parked in a disabled space right outside the door of customer services.’ Miss Cole has previously had to have large cuts on her arms and legs to relieve the pressure on her swollen limbs.
Her mother said you can see the signs of her daughter’s condition ‘quite clearly’.
She added that she was shocked staff at Ikea’s Warrington branch demanded payment to help her daughter on their visit last week.
Mrs Cole said: ‘I had to go and do it for her. She’s really upset, just livid. She said she was just so gobsmacked. It’s discrimination really – they should be able to help disabled people.’
A spokesman for Ikea said: ‘At Ikea we want to make it easy and convenient for all our customers to shop with us.
‘For visitors with disabilities we offer a range of services, including assisted shopping, which can be requested at the customer information desk or by telephoning the store in advance.
‘We are sorry to hear that on a recent visit to the Warrington store a customer was not offered the assisted shopping service as expected.
‘We are investigating this incident with the store to understand why this happened and welcome the customer to contact us directly so we can discuss her experience with us and apologise for our mistake.’
‘She was really upset’