Good news and bad news for fans of Buy Buy Baby, the popular East Coast chain of baby stores.

Good news: the store has just debuted a new web site with a cleaner look and revamped baby gift registry.

Bad news: the baby gift registry doesn’t work, prompting a flood of complaints from our readers. The problems: the site was down all weekend—and now numerous items are listed as out of stock, leaving folks with upcoming showers wondering if they should switch registries.

Here is a typical email from reader Mary A.:

I am due in 8 weeks and recently registered at Buy Buy Baby for my shower, based on your recommendation. Wouldn’t you know it — the weekend my invitations went out, they decided to revamp their website and the ability to purchase off the registry online was completely down. I really think they should have warned registrants in advance, as most of my guests don’t have kids and would only purchase online.
 
The phone number they referred people to is apparently a call center that services a few different stores, so my guests kept explaining to the operators that no, I wasn’t registered at Bed Bath and Beyond, and they could provide no help on descriptions of products.
 
When the registry went up a couple of days later, it was pretty messed up — you would click on certain items and the registry list would keep reappearing, rather than pulling up a description of the item. This problem has decreased in the past day or so, but is still an issue. Plus more than half of the items on my registry are out of stock.
 
The worst part by far is that I have faxed Buy Buy Baby and emailed several times and they just email back the same response, that they’re working on it. I requested a phone call from someone three times, but have heard nothing. In the meantime, my guests are totally confused about what to do. For a store that prides itself on customer service, all I’ve heard is crickets. Not even an offer of a token store credit for my inconvenience.
 
Unless something drastic happens over the next couple of days, I am definitely done with Buy Buy Baby.

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(Mary follows up with this email):

It’s been frustrating. If you go to my registry on the site, you’ll see that more than half the links you click on don’t work at all — just bring you back to the registry page. Then about 90% of the items on my registry — pretty normal items — are listed as "out of stock." I know that glitches can happen, but right now I feel like an unpaid Buy Buy Baby guinea pig.
 
I did call a store yesterday, and the assistant manager called me back a couple of hours later letting me know that he was frustrated too, and couldn’t get through to anyone except the people at the Call Center since they were bought out. He left a message with someone there, and I did get a call back from someone at their corporate office yesterday afternoon. She kept saying that people should just call the 800 number to order — which, I explained, wasn’t really working either. She transfered me to her supervisor who said she would call me back this afternoon.
 
This is not the end of the world, of course — I’ve had a really healthy pregnancy, and the registry is just a blip on my life’s radar screen. But if the supervisor doesn’t help out this afternoon, I am just going to register at Babies r Us and hope the word gets out.
 
PS — I bought my gorgeous wedding dress from a place in Boston you recommended in Bridal Bargains 6 years ago and saved $2500. You guys are the best!