When I set up my home office in 2015, I knew I wanted a motorized standing desk. The easier it is to raise and lower, the less commitment there is in standing up. The less commitment, the easier it is to stand up. At the time, IKEA had just released their Bekant Sit/Stand desk for about 2/3 the cost of the competition. I wish I had paid more to get a better desk.
The problem: It’s well documented that the Bekant has a power supply issue. The symptom is that it stops after raising just a few millimeters, then later refuses to move at all. This is caused by the power supply not putting out enough juice, according to some reports. My desk got stuck in a standing position for a week, maybe the longest work week I’ve had.
The workaround: Unplug the power supply when you are not actively raising or lowering the desk. Leave it unplugged until the moment you feel like switching between sitting and standing. I’ve been doing this for the past week and have had extremely consistent success. My power supply is hanging in the netting under the desk so I just need to pop the cord into that. No need to mess with the outlet.
The real fix: Keep returning your power supply to IKEA until you get one that works. Some people report never having an issue, and maybe you will get a power supply as glorious as theirs.
The good news is that the desk has a 10 year warranty – if you have your receipt. And your return will be much smoother if you get an employee who doesn’t demand that you disassemble your entire desk just for a detachable power supply.
I was lucky to have an employee tell me that they accept scanned copies of receipts, so mine lives in Evernote and comes out once a year when I want to try to fix my desk yet again. It takes about an hour to do the exchange in my experience, and I’m on my 3rd power supply. I also happen to live 10 minutes from an IKEA; I can’t imagine driving a couple of hours to do the exchange.
You may have some luck in contacting Rol Ergo directly for a replacement, according to this Facebook comment.
[Photo credit: mastermaq under CC 2.0 BY-SA license. Because my desk is in no condition be seen by anyone.]
Update: Feb 11, 2021: My desk has been working fine for the past couple years. The current power supply works great. I would recommend a Bekant now, assuming that they’ve fixed the power supply issues.
14 responses to “Workaround for IKEA Bekant Sit/Stand Desks”
I have not purchased yet, but wanted some more insight. I reached out to IKEA Customer Care and got this reply:
You are correct the power supply units are primarily the cause, but not in every case.
IKEA has identified potentially defective Power Supply Units (PSUs) for our BEKANT underframes as having the date stamps 1502, 1506 & 1507. These date stamps can be read on the label located on the PSU itself.
Since you are strongly considering a purchase of the BEKANT desk please note you are welcome to visit our store and meet with one of our store coworkers and ascertain if your product has one of these date stamps prior to purchase. If so you are encouraged to pull another desk from quantity to purchase that of course would not have that date stamp.
In your case you will have the information proactively to hopefully avoid any potential product failure. The incidents you have researched are of course post purchase issues that we are rectifying by way of our 10year warranty. In either case you will be covered under both the warranty as well as our 365 return or exchange policy.
Doesn’t make much sense that they are not recalling the affected PSUs and relying on customers having to return (potentially returning the entire desk even!).
Thanks for this information. Are you happy with the desk in general? How stable it is at raised position?
After getting a replacement power supply directly from Rol Ergo (and not going through IKEA) it’s been great. Pretty stable when raised, even with a dual monitor stand mounted on the far side. I’m using their Bekant desk with the legs.
I have one at home and it’s worked well for the past year or so. It just started having issues this week and I’m thinking it’s the aforementioned power supply issue. I just started a new job and we have Jarvis desks here. I think I like these a little better. They’re very stable and I like that you can preset the height.
Thanks – we are bitten with 18 of these desks with the affected PSUs. Of course this is quite a nuisance in our company and people point their fingers at me for having chosen to buy such a desk with perceived low quality because of that issue. Hope thanks to your article we’re finally going to get a bulk replacement.
Posting here to confirm that I had success contacting Rol Ergo directly. They were very responsive and shipped out a replacement power supply within 2 weeks. Desk is working again.
We recently got the Bekant sit/stand from IKEA As-Is section and it wouldn’t go up, only the down button worked. So we tried resetting it, Googled ideas, and finally called the Google help desk. They sent a new remote after I suggested this as an option, no charge. 7 full days later, it arrived plugged it in and it had the same problem. We finally tried sending it all the way down and then it would go up. I was afraid to try this incase it was stuck at the bottom, but our only option was to try to take it back and it would fit in the car better in a lower position. Hopefully anyone else who has this problem can try and see if this works.
*IKEA help desk
Just confirming, that contacting ROL Ergo directly worked perfectly. Great customer service. They asked for a photo of my power supply. Then they shipped my replacement and it works great again! Thx so much for the info!
I did some more research on these desk (we own 3).
There are some things people don’t know,
1. You can only change x times, before PSU goes in protection mode. It will work again after a while (up to half hour)
2. Resetting the desk is done by holding the down button, which effectively resets desk height system.
3. The desk has a anti injury/stuck protection, which stops and moves the desk one centimeter in opposite travel direction.
@ our office we now control the Bekant desks with our computers, so sitting and standing height follows the logged in user.
I picked up a on/off foot peddle/switch and it works great. It stays off till I need it. Press the peddle to let the capacitors charge for a second and you can raise and lower your desk every time.
This is what I got, but any will do as long as it’s off by default.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VSF64RM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Rol Ergo will no longer accept the warranty request. They directed me back to Ikea.
This worked like a charm, thanks for posting this
Had the issue where the UP button would only raise the desk 1/4″ and a time, DOWN button worked fine. Researched tons of blogs (with no luck on the work-arounds). Called IKEA, told them the issue…they know it’s been a problem. The they replaced:
AS-P-9287067 510 138684 SWITCH UP & DOWN INCL-KEY 1
AS-P-9287067 510 138685 KEY FOR UP & DOWN SWITCH BEKAN 1
AS-P-9287067 510 138688 TRANSF.WITH CABLE 34V 2,2Amp 1
AS-P-9287067 510 138689 EXTENSION CABLE FOR TRANSF. 1
AS-P-9287067 510 138690 CORDSET XXX 3000 NA C7 BLACK 1
No questions asked. 5 year’s old. No proof of purchase. Very satisfied how they handled it.