I am a Christian, husband to my beautiful wife & best friend of nine years and father of three adorable children.
I use this website to log my thoughts, happenings & whatnot. Sometimes my posts are work or web-related & sometimes they are family-related or just random.
I produce creative design and code for a living.
If you interested in discussing a project related to design, UI, web standards, CSS, identity, etc, feel free to contact me through my company, Visual Notion.
I have a riddle.
When is a stroller like a box(s) of Legos?
Answer: When you shop at Toys"R"Us.
Let me explain.
While I was working, my wife and three children went in Friday morning to buy a new stroller at our local Toys"R"Us. Unfortunately, our local store is not known for its swift service and helpful staff, so it wasn't a surprise when she had a hard time finding anyone to help her in the stroller section. A woman in another department came to help her, but admits she knows nothing of the strollers. She helps her the best she can to answer my wife's questions about how the stroller works (folds up, etc).
My wife decided to go ahead and purchase the stroller she was looking at and the woman said she would have someone bring one form the stock room up to the front counter. Because we have waited for 45 minutes or more for things to be brought from the "magical" stock room, she asked if she could just have the boxed stroller on the shelf brought up front instead. The employee said that was fine and took it up front for her. After waiting in line for around 15 minutes or more (they typically only have one cashier open, unless it's really busy and, then, they have two) she pays for her purchase.
After struggling with the box (remember she has all three kids with her) because none of the 3-5 employed spectators standing around doing nothing would help her, she gets the basket and the kids through the first set of doors. Upon trying to reach the second set of doors, she was blocked in by all the baskets lined up in front of the doors. After fighting with the baskets for a few minutes (again, no help from the statues collecting a paycheck), another customer comes to help her move all the baskets out of the way. She makes it to the van and loads up the kids AND the box that seemed be too monumental a task for the Toys"R"Us Spectators to handle, let alone offer to help. Sidenote: I personally believe that our local Toys"R"Us doesn't have to pay any workmans comp claims as you can't get hurt if you aren't actually working.
So they make it back home. The box stays in the van for a little while as she and the kids had other things to do around the house. That afternoon, while the kids were taking naps, she opens the box, in the living room. This is when she comes to get me and says,"Oh, you're not going to believe this..."
Now, when one buys a stroller that is boxed up, you have certain expectations that the box will have a stroller inside it. It may not be fully assembled, but it seems fairly reasonable to assume that what is pictured on the box is what is inside the box. Apparently, this is isn't the case at our Toys"R"Us.
Inside the box, was Legos, a lot of Legos. Now, if you hadn't deduced by the struggle my wife had, this box is pretty large. You might be wondering, "Legos usually don't weigh that much, why didn't anyone notice how light it was?" That is a valid question, and, the box was just heavy enough for us to still assume it had a stroller in it. This is pretty easy to understand when you consider that there was eight, rather large sets, of Legos in the box!
We were dumbfounded. "What!? How...? What in the world...?"
Because of an incident that happened at Wal-Mart to a woman who thought she purchased an Xbox 360, I thought it was wise to see how much these sets were worth in case they thought we were trying to scam Toys"R"Us. It turns out these sets sell for $39.99 a pop.
My wife called the store and asked to speak to the manager. She told him of the trouble she had with the staff and he didn't seem very sympathetic, much less interested in listening, until she got the the part about buying a $149.00 stroller (which they also failed to apply her coupon to) and getting $320.00 of Legos instead. She said that he sounded rather deflated at that point. I am not sure if she could hear the sound of him soiling his pants when she told him we knew what they were worth and they could be sold on Ebay, but I would have liked to see the look on his face (I wouldn't have cared, in the least, to witness the soiling).
Since we wanted to do the right thing, she took the kids with her to take our Lego Stroller back, that evening. I was at home waiting to die from a horendous stomachache... Italian food and bike riding within the same hour do not mix well. Moving right along...
Since Toys"R"Us desires to have consistency in the customer service department, she had the pleasure of waiting for an extended amount of time again with our three, small children. After the manager looked for another stroller, he said the computer inventory lists four of those strollers in the stock room, but all they had was one floor model left (My theory is that those four strollers are stuffed in some Lego boxes somewhere in that store). The manager did explain that the stroller box was marked to be shipped back to Lego as they had been discontinued and it somehow wound up back on the floor. My wife wondered if Lego was perplexed about receiving a shipment of strollers.
A short while later, my body decided to fight for life and I was recovering. I called her to see how she was doing and she wasn't sure the floor model had all the pieces and they couldn't find the instructions for it (I told her to check the Lego boxes). I searched online real quick for the instructions and couldn't find them on the Fisher-Price website. I did a search in Google for that stroller and it's instructions and came across pages mentioning that stroller along with words like "Worst Stroller Ever", "Avoid at all costs", "Parts keep falling off", along with "Recalled" and "Discontinued." I called her back and told her what I found.
She relayed the "recall" information to the manager and he was surprised. You see, once something is recalled, a store is not supposed to sell it anymore. He said he was surprised that he didn't know it had been recalled and had wondered why Fisher-Price had discontinued that stroller after only three months. He said they usually get notices from the manufacturers, but, based on the day's event, he wouldn't be surprised if they had received one and no one did anything about it (they should have checked the stroller box). Maybe the notice was in there with the Legos, which makes as much sense as the rest of the mess.
My wife opted to get a refund. The manager refunded our money and, while the receipt printed out, he grimaced and sighed. He reluctantly told her there was a survey with the receipt that they use to see how they are doing. You can bet he won't be excited for that survey to be submitted. You would think they would have given a gift card or something, but, no, that would go against their "No Customer Service For You!" policy.
After all was said and done, it cost her was two hours of waiting with three tired children, a terrible experience with customer service at Toys"R"Us and weird story to tell.
The moral of this story is to always check the box to make sure it has what most of us would assume is already in there, unless, of course, you like the whole "grab bag" game. If so, go to Toys"R"Us and shake the large boxes in the Baby Department. After your lonely struggle to the checkout, the long wait in line, noticing how much of an oxymoron the words "hired help" are in this store, and fighting the baskets to get to your car you never know what you'll wind up with.
Until then, we'll be avoiding Toys"R"Us for while.
Comments
Wow, that is horrendous man! You guys should call customer service and ask for a free stroller. lol. :-)
Oh, that needs to get ciruculated all over the internet. That is hilarious. You really wrote that very well. I hope Jennifer could laugh as much as we did. Thanks for sharing.
LOL. I wish I could've seen his face when he handed you that receipt. They should've given you guys that stroller for free... or at least taken the price down a bit.
Well told, that's a classic. Maybe they'd do better in the business of selling grab bags.
Dude, you need to submit this to Consumerist.com so they can get the word out about Toys R Us customer service.
Very well written!
Something similar to this happened to me at Target. I was fresh out of boot camp at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. After the graduation ceremony my mother who was visiting took me shopping to get a large duffel bag to hold all of my civies (civilian clothing). I looked at a couple, and grabbed one randomly.
When we went to pay, the cashier opened the bag to either throw away the packing material or check it for other items. Lo and behold it was full of about $200 worth of baby clothes. This looked really bad. I mean I know what happened, and it still looked really bad. I am quite sure that if I had not been in uniform we would have both ended up in the clink. Somehow they believed us, and we bought the bag, sans clothing, and I still have it.
maybe this is just because I don't have any kids, but why were yall buying a stroller at Toys R Us? aren't there baby stores and, like, Targets that probably have more knowledgeable staff, more expertise in the area, and a smaller chance that you'll get a box full of products completely unrelated to your original purchase? honestly, I'm not surprised that purchasing a baby item at a toy store turned out so badly.
Louis Merit,
I could see how that could look pretty bad. I'm glad they believed you. I had an instance where Target didn't charge me for the $50 cordless phone we purchased. I realized it when we got home and I went back to pay for it. They were completely dumbfounded that I came back to pay for it. Contrast that with the guy in the other customer service line that was claiming he wanted to return the PlayStation game he bought that didn't have a disc in it. The guy didn't seem legit, but I guess he could have been. It's amazing how much theft goes on and even more amazing that people just won't do the right thing.
NoKids,
Yes, we have a Target, but the selection wasn't as good and I don't believe they were carrying the stroller we wanted. That is probably partly due to the fact that Target probably stays on the ball more often since the thing had been discontinued/recalled.
We opted to skip getting another stroller, anyway.
Someone probably had a load of Lego overstock, found a big box to put it on, sealed it, didn't label it and voila...properly shelved stroller box of Legos :p
Hey NoKids - Toys r us' sister store is BabiesRUs - the HQ for baby crap (or, as we like to call it, the Petsmart for Babies). It's reasonable to assume that TRU WOULD know how to sell the baby stuff - especially if there isn't a BRU nearby.
I'm sorry to hear about this situation. We've had really excellent customer service from Albeebaby dot com for car seat shopping - it might be something to check out if you need any more baby gear.
Yeah, we've found over the years with our kids that Target, Babys R Us, and Toys R Us all tend to carry some of the same items and some "exclusive" items. And of course, sometime one will have what you want on sale and the other won't. My experience is also that every Toys R Us I've ever been in has been pretty much equally bad.
It's amazing anyone still goes to bricks & mortar stores at all, especially Toys R Us.
Dude... you should have built a lego stroller then taken it back and asked how you're kids are supposed to ride in it... classic!
Florabora,
Our youngest is now one year old and so we should be set for most of what we need now, but I'll definately keep Albeebaby in mind. We typically buy Britax car seats which are great, I might add. Thanks.
Miles,
If I had the time, I could have, but then Toys R Us would probably have tried to charge me for the Legos.
I work at a retail store and have caught some of our more incompetent employees doing things just like this. We do something like display a printer, and then our shipping guy uses the box to ship out something that's recalled. Then some idiot sees this printer box and thinks it should go out on the shelf. Luckily we rip the barcodes off display boxes, so they never get sold. More often, damaged merchandise ends up back on the shelf and it doesn't get caught until it reaches the register.
egadgetjunkie,
At least it gets caught at the register there. Kudos to you for being one of the useful people in retail.
Wow. That really is bizarre. I sell the LEGOs for more than that. Over $40 for that set.
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