IKEA Reading car park chaos

Customers trapped in multi-storey yet again

THERE was once again chaos at IKEA Reading yestertoday (Saturday) as customers became trapped in the store's multi-storey car park for the second time in a month.

Angry customers were stuck in their vehicles at the Calcot store for almost two hours as the car park became gridlocked again.

The incident mirrored scenes in July when some shoppers were trapped for more than four hours, due to the sheer number of vehicles trying to leave.

The situation during the opening weekend became so bad that IKEA staff took to handing bottled water to those trapped in their cars, while police were called to the scene to help direct traffic.

Management at the store in Pincents Lane, which has only been open for a matter of weeks, promised to review the traffic flows out of the 1,000 capacity multi-storey car park in an effort to make sure the scenes were not repeated.

However despite the review customers once again experienced tremendous difficulty leaving the store today.

The 32,000sq m West Berkshire store opened on Thursday (July 14).

Picture credit: @a_mongrel