[jakeandrebecca]

I'm hoping someone here can offer some advise. We are 95 percent done with our IKEA Nexus Yellow Brown kitchen, and now we can't find cabinet doors for our upper cabinets that match the lower cabinet doors, toe kicks, end panels, filler strips, etc. We need five (15"x39") -- we've now ordered them twice from the College Park IKEA.

The first time we ordered them with a number of other pieces -- everything else matched, but these 5 doors were totally off (they matched each other but nothing else). We talked to the kitchen folks, they suggested reordering them, so we did. Two weeks later when they came, they were wrong again.

We called the Woodbridge IKEA and they had 6 in stock, so we drove down to the store and bought them -- three were the right color, three were the wrong color. Any ideas as to how we can track down the right color? I contacted the "after sales" specialist at College Park, but they won't return my calls.

Also, we just started our kitchen in July, so it isn't like the rest of the kitchen is much older, and we received one shipment that was half the old color and half the new color. I noticed that in the new IKEA catalog, the picture of the NYB kitchen even looks different. (The new color is more brown and not as yellow -- not bad at all, but just not at all the same as the old one!)

Thanks in advance for suggestions!

Address: 2901 Potomac Mills Circle Woodbridge, VA 22192 Telephone: 703-494-4532 Store hours: Mon-Fri 10am - 9:30pm Saturday 9am - 9:30pm Sunday 10am - 8pm IKEA Store Directory Entry for IKEA Woodbridge

Address:10100 Baltimore Ave College Park, MD 20740 Telephone:(301)-345-6552 Store hours:Mon-Fri 10am - 9pm Saturday 9am - 9pm Sunday 10am - 8pm IKEA Store Directory Entry for IKEA College Park

[Chuck]

Welcome to IKEAFANS, jakeandrebecca.

To those of us with Adel Medium Brown kitchens, your story will sound all too vaguely familiar. Over the course of this year, the color of AMB pieces has changed, as IKEA has changed its sourcing for these materials.

The first thing you should do is check to see where and when your original finish pieces were made. What you are looking for are the supplier code and the manufacturing date. To do this, you need to find 2 sets of numbers - these will be either on the label of the boxes the pieces were shipped in, or on a small sticker somewhere on those pieces. On doors, the sticker may be inside one of the hinge holes; on the drawer fronts and cover panels, the sticker will be on the back side of those items. On your boxes, the numbers will be on the label.

The supplier code (SC) is a 5 digit number - this format doesn't vary, though the number does. Each supplier that produces goods for IKEA has a unique code - it might be 16230, 20995, 21277, or something completely different altogether.

The date code (DC) is a little different, and the formatting varies a little bit. The date code will start with a "0" (that's a zero, not the letter "o"), and at a minimum, will be 4 digits altogether. It may be 4 digits, followed by a - (dash) and a 5th digit. There is another format that escapes me right now, but it includes the initial 4 digit number.

A DC of 0845 indicates that the piece was made in the 45th week (45) of 2008 (08); 0912 would mean the 12th week of 2009, and so on. A DC of 0845-2 would mean the piece was made on the 2nd day (Tuesday, I guess) of the 45th week of 2008.

Once you find these numbers on the finish pieces you've already installed, compare those numbers to the ones on the boxes of the pieces you're trying to install now - chances are, they will be different.

Your "goal" is to find new boxes with DC and SC numbers that match your old pieces. This may not be an easy thing to do, as those old numbers may have been sold out, or your store folks may not cooperate. But the thing is to stick to it, scream a bit (ok, a lot, maybe), and climb the ladder to the store manager.

To get an idea of what others have faced, check out this thread, which tells the tale of the color changes in AMB.

Adel Medium Brown doors don't match




On a side note, what extension are you dialing to reach the after-sales department?