What’s the difference?
In Greece, IKEA is a Swedish furniture store and IKA (Ιδρυμα Kοινωνικών Aσφαλίσεων) is a social insurance fund that provides for pensioners and salaried workers.
I understand that longtime residents of Greece know the difference, but I wanted to prevent newcomers in need of medical services from traveling to Spata or Aigaleo, only to find inexpensive furniture and not an “IKEA hospital.” IKEA does not repair people or even furniture for that matter. Some would argue that IKA does not provide the means to properly repair people either, but that’s a different story altogether.
Likewise, an IKA location offers no furniture for sale and can only provide workers and retirees in Greece with services pertaining to insurance matters and pensions.
*Article last updated March 2, 2012
IKEA and IKA websites
Links to official websites, one with a limited English version and the other (now) only in Greek.
IKA (www.ika.gr) purports to have their site in several languages, however it’s not quite true. The English, French and German versions have been expanded from one sentence to a few paragraphs with a Word document containing “more information” in Greek, which isn’t very useful since those choosing this option can’t read Greek. The Albanian, Russian, Romanian and Bulgarian versions connect to a one-page PDF in the respective language, and this isn’t nearly enough to cover the basics.
IKEA (www.ikea.gr) removed a wonderful English version of its website in early 2011 for reasons unknown. See “IKEA Greece” for a translation of essential information.
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“IKEA Greece”
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Athens
46°
Kat Reply:
May 17th, 2007 at 19:04
Cheryl – Thanks for the compliment!
I started this site as a tool to help people because although information is floating around, there are variations. Websites are also more prominent than when I came here 10 years ago, but still lack English versions or even complete info in Greek for those who speak the language. It’s not like the USA where you can take a driver’s license test or do taxes in 10 languages and get by just fine without ever learning English (which is free, even if you’re illegal). Many lifelong natives of Greece don’t experience as much bureaucracy as expats, and sometimes don’t have any idea about what to do, so I get questions from them too. It not just expats who need assistance.