Reader Mike O. writes in today with his frustrations in dealing with the Babies R Us baby gift registry:
We wanted to provide you with some negative feedback (surprise!) about Babies R Us (BRU). Getting BRU to take items off of our registry after they were purchased by our friends and family has been an exercise in futility. BRU still shows on our registry that we need a car seat base even though we were given a car seat base by one of our friends as a baby shower gift back in September 2011. We have tried calling BRU several times to get this baby registry problem worked out but our concerns have fallen on deaf and clueless ears. We ended up getting a second car seat base from a family friend in November 2011 (after our 2 baby showers) because our BRU baby registry still wasn’t showing that we had been given the first car seat base back in September 2011. I went to BRU a week ago to purchase some additional items (since my wife was at home with our newborn) off of our registry and, after printing it out, found that very few items which had been purchased and given to us at our 2 baby showers in September 2011 actually had been taken off of our BRU registry. This is just ridiculous.
What has been your experience with BRU’s registry? Post your experiences below.
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If we received an item that was on our BRU registry- we would log into our registry manager and update the item as purchased and it would immediately show up under purchased items. I never had to call BRU for assistance.
I definitely had more issues with Target and ended up deleting my registry there!
I agree with A. If for some reason the item is not coming off of the registry automatically, just go into the registry online and either remove the item or mark it as purchased. Some of my gifts were for the products but were not purchased from BRU so the registry was not updated.
I had the same problem, and ended up getting the same item twice during my baby shower. The two guests felt so bad giving me the same item, and neither of them received a gift receipt, despite it being requested, when the items were shipped. One friend offered to return her item (since I couldn’t return it without a gift receipt, unless i wanted to get the “cheaper” price), and I felt bad making her do that work. Apparently, even the cashier who my friend saw when she returned the gift said the registry has a lot of problems!
I did go to our registry and found that half of the items I received were not marked as purchased, so i just did it manually.
Same issue here… received 2 Exersaucers this weekend and emailed BRU… Guess what??? No reply! I am planning on going in the store and having the manager come out to my car and get the 2 HUGE items and haul them in!
This isn’t the 1st time… I’ve already had to return a car seat that they duplicated.
I go in after each shower and manually marked the items as purchased. It is interesting however that there are items “purchased” that I didn’t receive…
My daughter had nothing but trouble with their registry and would not recommend it.
Another problem with their registry is that a lot of items are lumped together. Meaning, when I register for cups, mittens, pacifiers, etc. in “blue”, they default to “pink”. I’ve asked store associates and emailed their website asking why they can’t give each item their own item number. Store associates blew me off and someone emailed me back the other day saying “they’re working on it” (it’s been a year when I first heard this, FYI) but that some items are lumped together. So I have to do the extra work by putting comments on my registry telling people to buy blue instead of pink (at BRU’s suggestion) which I find tacky.
We experienced the same issue when we recently bought some gifts off a registry. They never took them off the registry when we purchased them (although they said they did). I noticed this and then went to another store to have them manually remove the items-after much eye rolling they told us they did it. Got home-still not removed. Sent an email to customer service who basically stated it must have been our fault and that we didn’t advise the cashier. My husband made multiple phone call attempts to customer service-he probably spoke with 5 or 6 reps (after being disconnected a few times) and one person finally took the items off for us. We are definitely hesitant to use them for ourselves.
We haven’t had any real issues with BRU other than not having anything in stock after we went through the trouble of registering for all of it. What’s the point of registering at a local store for the convenience even though you know the prices are often higher, if they aren’t going to have anything in stock anyway?
One note about gift reciepts. We got several things at our shower that we decided to return, including 2 of the same item. We brought as many reciepts with us but didn’t need them. Since they were purchased from the registry, their system was able to match up the origianl purchase date of each item that was purchased from our registry. At the end, I got a store credit and a reciept listing the original purchase date, time and price of each item. I thought it went very smoothly.
I would still rather shop online and get better prices.