Hundreds of shoppers have Sunday ruined after being trapped in IKEA car park for more than THREE hours
Furious commuters took to social media as they waited in their cars inside the gridlocked 1,000-space car park
HUNDREDS of shoppers were trapped in a multi-storey Ikea car park for more than three hours after nearby roadworks caused massive jams.
Furious customers ranted on social media on Sunday. Just after 6pm, one commented: “Finally made it home, having set off from Ikea before 1pm!”
The manager of the store in Reading apologised and said staff were caught out by a lane closure outside.
The Swedish furniture shop in Pincents Kiln Industrial Park, Reading, Berks., has seen a number of similar traffic nightmares since it opened in July last year, but for some shoppers, the chaos on the back-to-school weekend seems to have been the final straw.
One customer, Carla Chappell, said: "Took us nearly three and a half hours to get out from level two, total joke.
"Staff were near on useless, they only started moving when they actually started directing traffic".
Local resident Anne Lancaster said: "It's happened so many times, always on a weekend afternoon. I'm not sure why nothing seems to have changed.
"If you're at all local I'd recommend going weekday evenings, it's very quiet and open until 9pm I think. The Reading Bus service is also a good option if you don't have large, heavy things to pick up."
Shortly after 6pm, Sophie Afriat Walters commented: "Finally made it home, having set off from Ikea before 1pm!"
As the problem was being dealt with in the afternoon, an IKEA spokesman told a customer: "There has been an accident on the roundabout near the Reading store, if this is the car park you are referring to."
However, a spokesman from Thames Valley Police soon discredited this claim, saying no crash had been reported in the area all weekend.
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They said: "We have not had any reports of a crash.
"The report we had was that a member of the public rang and said they had been in the car park for more than 90 minutes and were wondering what was going on."
The spokesman added that officers had not attended the traffic jam, as the disruption had taken place "in a private car park set on private land".
On Monday afternoon, store manager Johanna Heuren said: "The disruption followed the closure of one of the entrance lanes to the retail park due to road works. This resulted in a bottleneck at the roundabout which caused severe delays on Pincent Lane and in our car park.
"On this busy 'Back to School' weekend our team didn't anticipate the consequence of the lane closure and responded as quickly as possible to try to rectify the situation. We would like to thank our customers for their patience."
