So we’ve had a registry with Babies ‘R’ Us set up for a couple of months now; we set it up when my parents came up for Martin Luther King Weekend, as they do every year. On said registry, we had a number of items, not the least of which were a car seat, stroller, and Pack ‘n’ Play, all by Graco, all selected by Maureen in a pattern called Windsor. It was actually quite the nice pattern.
What’s that, you say? I should be referring to it in the present tense? We’re getting to that.
So we attended a breast feeding seminar at the local BRU (an experience we may discuss in further detail on the next episode of The Wicked Good Podcast), and afterward went to check on the status of the above mentioned items. You see, Maureen, being the diligent mom to be that she is, has been keeping up with the items on our registry, and she noticed (thanks to some prompting from Scott J) that the Windsor items have been marked as “Temporarily Out Of Stock” on the BRU web site. We go up and down the aisles and can’t find anything in Windsor. So I suggest that we go to customer service and get to the bottom of things.
At customer service, we’re informed that the Windsor line has been discontinued. We ask if any of the stores in the area have any left, and, without even a check of the computer, the employee says that all the stores are out and that there are none left. (Apparently, she’s related to one of the characters in Heroes. You know, the one who can read everything online with her mind.)
Needless to say, we’re upset. (OK, Maureen more than me, but that’s to be expected.) There are actually several things wrong with this scenario. One, you’re in a store where you’re dealing with pregnant, borderline crazy women all day; you’d think that the employees would have some sensitivity and not treat the fact that the car seat that we’d registered for as discontinued as though they stopped making our current brand of motor oil. Just some compassion would be nice, as opposed to a flippant, “Nope!” when we ask if anyone in the area has these items.
Two, where was the notification? Their system knows that we registered for these things. Is it so difficult to send out an e-mail to let us know that these things are discontinued? When were they planning on letting us know that we couldn’t buy the item that we’d registered for? We’re talking about necessary items here; it would’ve been nice to know that we’d need to pick something else out, you know, sometime before the baby’s born.
Finally, remember the Heroes reject who told us that all the stores were out? Turns out that wasn’t the case. We called another BRU, and the first one we called had the stroller and car seat, so that’s on hold for us to pick up tomorrow. The pack and play was a little harder to find, but it seems that Maureen was able to find one near her parents in California, so, for the time being, crisis averted.
I’m extremely disappointed with Babies ‘R’ Us. They really could have handled this situation a LOT differently and ended up with some happy, loyal customers. Instead, they took the lazy route in almost every instance (with the exception of Roger at the Framingham, MA store and Victoria at the Warwick, RI store who, even at closing time, did their best to track down as much as they could for us,), and we ended up a lot more upset and annoyed than we should have been, honestly. Five minutes extra looking stuff up at the store that we were at instead of getting us out the door as quickly as possible so they could continue their conversation could have avoided an extremely unpleasant evening.
Oh, and they owe me a Quizno’s sandwich. Roast Beef on Garlic Bread. Because that’s where we should have gone after we left the store, instead of going home to search for the juvenile Holy Grail.
UPDATE: The registry fiasco gets more egregious. Maureen called Graco and discovered that, yes, the style is officially discontinued, and, to make matters worse, it’s a Toys/Babies ‘R’ Us exclusive style. There’s absolutely no excuse for the lack of notification from BRU, especially since my mother was able to add these items to a test registry this morning.
That said, Maureen’s been calling around to a bunch of stores, and everyone she’s gotten on the phone has done their best to help us out. So thumbs up to the people answering the phones at BRU, but two thumbs down to their registry service.
