False Advertising Much?
It is less than six week’s until Little Miss Graham’s arrival and I couldn’t be more excited! It hit me last night how suddenly VERY close we are to her arrival and I started to freak a little. I have been ABUNDANTLY blessed by friends with clothes and gear, and we have been able to buy a bunch of the things we need ourselves as well, but every day I remember that there are somethings we need for her that we just don’t have yet.
I still need to get a monitor… we had one for Alton and I lent it to a friend. It was not returned. 
Plus, I know from experience, that I can’t hear Alton crying at night across the house, so I most likely won’t hear her either without a little help from technology. We also need a full sized car seat and a swing, the car seat can wait until after Christmas. The swing can not. But I did find the one we used with Alton on Amazon, so I will be purchasing that off of our registry at Amazon soon. Other things we need? Socks and a bath tub. Random right? With everything we’ve been given and all of the cute little ensembles that I’ve gotten for her, I have sorta neglected to buy her socks. Bad mama! The bath tub we had for Alton was great, but we gave it and most of our newborn baby gear to missionary friends when they unexpectedly adopted twin babies.
Anyway, since we are on a tight budget, I have been trying to accumulate the last few things we need with many gift cards and coupons as we can. Every little bit helps. So imagine how excited I was when I got an email a couple of weeks ago from Babies R Us offering me 20% off of ANY purchase of $99.00 or more. Whoot! Score! I checked the ALWAYS included list of exclusions and the brand and make of car seat I wanted wasn’t listed. Yay! I should have been able to save $40 off of the price of the car seat! So I went to my registry list and put the car seat in my online cart.
Hmm, that’s funny, the discount is showing up.
(Have you ever wanted to jiggle your computer a little to make something behave? I so wanted to do that right then.)
Okay, so I emailed customer service to ask what the deal is. Two full days later, I finally get a response that is so not worth the time I spent emailing them that I hit delete in disgust and shook my pregnant (and not swollen!) fist at the monitor and vowed to not buy from them again.
I have heard that Amazon has AWESOME customer service. So I thought, why not give them a call and see what they can do? Not only can you request a customer service phone call, but they have an option where you give them your phone number online and then a LIVE PERSON WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH calls you! No phone tree!!!! No dialing one for new orders. No dialing two for existing orders. It’s the little things people!
Anyway I digressed in my excitement.
So a very nice man from Amazon called me five minutes after I requested a call, and I explained the Babies R Us debacle. I told him that I would rather buy from Amazon, but that the $40 savings was significant to my family. The very nice man put me on hold for a minute. I sat there thinking, “There is no way they are going to do anything…. they don’t need to.” We he came back a couple of minutes later and said, “Thanks for your call, I am sorry we can’t give you the full forty dollars off, but we can offer you $25 off and free shipping.”
SOLD!
So I used the $25 off they offered me and $20 worth of Amazon gift cards I earned through Swagbucks and saved $45 off of the seat we wanted.
Fast forward to Wednesday of this week. I got an email from Babies R Us Promising FREE SHIPPING on EVERYTHING!* *Standard shipping only to lower 48 states, street addresses, up to $20 value. Excludes video game consoles/handhelds and hardware, gift cards and Buyer Protection Plan.
Excellent! I have a couple of gift cards from my shower and the rewards coupon I got from previous Babies R Us purchases. I can do the free shipping thing and use up the money I have to get a couple of things I still need for the baby.
Except, when I go to their site and put a few things in my cart, it charged me for shipping!!! NO WHERE in the email did it say that the free shipping was dependent on a certain dollar amount. It only mentions that they won’t ship to Alaska or Hawaii, or give me free shipping on video games systems or gift cards. I assure you, we were not buying her a video game.
How are they still in business? Seriously, this bait and switch and non-disclosed exclusions should be against the law if it isn’t already. I feel like they are preying on highly hormonal expectant parents that aren’t watching closely when they order things for their impending bundles.
So I am now done. I am going to complete the rest of my baby buying needs at Amazon and Buy, Buy Baby when it opens here in Torrance soon. I am going to TRY very hard not to shop at Toys R Us anymore either. That will take some effort, but my sense of justice has been affronted and I am done. Anyone want to buy some Babies R Us Gift cards?
