When Customer Service Flies Out the Window

This day and age everything is so fast paced and streamlined when it comes to the retail world.   You can do a lot of your shopping in your pajamas in front of the television (which I love!).  I think with these many conveniences, you tend to lose track of what it is like to personally deal with people as a consumer, and it makes it easier for retailers to avoid working with them when a problem arises.

I recently ran across a great deal on a couple of car seats for the boys.  We currently have car seats for the boys but they seem to be outgrowing them and the things appear to be falling apart.   They will be in them for at least two more years, and I am afraid that they won’t last.  So I popped online when a friend told me that Target was running a terrific deal on Britax car seats ($42.99), so I rushed over and purchased two of them online.   Well come to find out, they were mispriced and they wound up canceling my order.  I was pretty bummed to say the least and felt a bit jipped.   Most places would typically honor the priceif it was a mistake on their part.

I was informed in my cancellation notice that, if I still wanted these seats that I could purchase them at the regular price of ($280) per seat!  WOW!   Now I can understand, that they made a mistake, but as a customer I feel like I am really the one paying for it.   Whatever happened to actual “customer service?”  Instead with this email, it felt more like welcome to “TARGET we are at our service.”   So basically their policy is in place to protect only them so only they profit or don’t lose anything?  Something seems a little backwards about that…don’t you think?   How is this anything remotely akin to customer service?, not only that, if you call, you more than likely will get someone in India!

Several of my friends had called about this mishap and were reassured that the price would be honored, then their orders were canceled, and a few lucky people…so I hear, had their seats shipped.   I am totally irked by all of this, and I am not usually one that complains much about this sort of thing, but I guess it just struck me as very seedy like practice.  How convenient it must be not to follow through, or just be able to send out a cancellation notice and poof your problems are over.  I usually have to deal with the mistakes I make, and their isn’t any way I can erase them….why should it be any different for Target or anyone else?  If I showed up and didn’t have my receipt, it would have been I am sorry but we can not refund your purchase.  I would seriously reconsider where you shop next time…I definitely won’t be shopping at Target anytime soon!

Here is the email I got in response to my letter I sent through their online help.  Notice the letter is from Sinu and none of the other responses I have read that other folks posted were from names I could pronounce.   Wow, what a way to do your customers…send out a general letter and not address the issue at all.  Not much different from the cancellation letter they sent to everyone.

I’m sorry, but we had to cancel your order with us for Britax marathon car seat. Because of an error, our website showed the wrong price for this item, and we can’t sell it to you for that price. If you’d still like to buy the item for the correct price, you can go ahead and place a new order.

We work hard to make sure that all of the prices on Target.com are right, but the rare mistake does come up. That’s why we always double check prices when we ship your order. In this case, we cancelled your order when we found the mistake. In other situations, we may choose to contact you for instructions before cancelling or changing your order.

Everything we did is in line with our posted pricing policies. If you want more information about those policies, you can look them up here: http://www.target.com/help

I know that you count on more than just great products from Target.com, and that having the right information on our website is just is important. I hope we haven’t disappointed you, and that you’ll continue to shop with us.

Best regards,

Sinu Thomas

Target.com Guest Service

http://www.target.com

Power Scouts and Skull Mountain

Both of my boys are car fanatics, so naturally when they get a car it is the greatest thing on earth to them.  Monkey has to be my biggest fan and he loves to line up his matchbox cars, and count them, and drive them into imaginary garages and use his books as ramps.   He is already two and his imaginary play impresses me.

Naturally when they opened up their power scout and skull mountain they were just as giddy with excitement as I am when I get something new.

Mattel Matchbox Land Skull Mountain Playset is the ultimate test for the super scouts where treacherous roads and falling boulders are just the beginning of a challenging and treacherous journey. Use the super scout 4x4s all-wheel drive to master the crushing climb to the top of Skull Mountain and then get ready for a frightfully good time inside the skull. Sure to inspire loads of manipulative fun and imaginative play, Skull Mountain features enough challenging barriers and touch-point obstacles to impress even the bravest explorer, power scout included!

Power Scout vehicles are tough enough to take any terrain. The Power Scouts vehicles go from neutral freewheeling mode to battery-powered all-wheel drive, and all you have to do is give it a tap on the back of the truck to activate the motor.  These cool new battery powered vehicles have super-grip tires to climb the steepest inclines. Battery included.

You can find power scouts and most toy store locations and online at Amazon.com and they are small enough that they are perfect for little hands.

POWER SCOUTS™ SKULL MOUNTAIN
ARP: $32.39 Ages: 3+ Available: Fall 2008

POWER SCOUTS™ VEHICLES
ARP: $6.99 Ages: 3+ Available: Fall 2008

Sports Buddy Giveaway Winner

Congratulations to Terra H. !  She is the winner of the Sports Buddy Giveaway.

Come back and visit Double Bugs often!!!

Finally Back

Well after the site being down for half the day, I am finally back.  Apparently my hosting company decided to do some upgrade that they never mentioned to anyone.  Anyway, my husband was able to get my back and running…thank goodness.  Sorry for being gone so long!

Shopping, two toddlers, and a pretzel

So I decided that I needed to get milk and a few other things this morning from the grocery.  Bubs has had a horrid diaper rash from the antibiotic he is on for his latest ear infection.   So I get us all ready and out the door and up the street.  I have twins, so the grocery store can sometimes be a challenge when you don’t have a cart to hold both of them.  Usually they have these little bench carts available and stupid cars that have videos that you have to pay for, well not today… so I put Bubs in the seat part and Monkey in the basket, because I wasn’t buying too much.

I gave each of the boys a few of their favorite mini pretzel rods and off I went.  Monkey decided to stand up and I am busy telling him to sit down when you guessed it…..he flopped right out of the cart and hit the floor.  It scared the crud out of me, and well, when I got him up, underneath his eye was all bloody.  He had fell and the pretzel cut  his eye.  So I leave the store and head home to see the damage and we decided to take him to urgent care.   Thankfully he didn’t need stitches, but imagine me telling them that he got cut by his pretzel!  Im just glad hes ok and I guess I will be paying for a cart next time when there are none of the free ones available.  I think its crazy that more places don’t have these and the ones that do have them should have them in good repair.   Half of them are broken!  Im sure all the twin moms can relate!

Plan Toys

Their Vision

At Plan Toys their vision has been to create toys that inspire children’s imagination as well as promote their physical and intellectual development. They are also proving that it is possible to maintain superior quality standards while following a path of environmental and social responsibility.

About Plan Toys

Plan Toys is the first company to manufacture toys using wood from rubber trees that no longer provide latex. The trees grow to heights of 50 feet or more. The sap from the rubberwood tree is the world’s primary source of natural rubber. After about 25 years, the latex yield decreases and the trees are usually cut down and burned. Instead of wasting this valuable resource, they build their toys from the rubberwood which helps preserve the delicate balance of our eco system. There is no deforestation involved in the harvesting of rubberwood, as felled trees are replanted with new ones. Rubberwood is an eco-friendly, sustainable, high quality wood. The paper used in their packaging is recyclable which further reduces waste and our plants use state of the art solar energy. Our plants use state of the art solar energy and biomass (fuel from biodegradable organic material).  This is pretty impressive!  Not only because of the way they use these otherwise wasted trees but the fact that they can turn them into wonderful and safe toys.

I  love toys that are of good quality and wooden ones at that.   These toys almost always seem to stand the test of time and fair better than a lot of the mass market toys out there.  I can remember as a child the wooden toys my grandmother had and she still had them when I was 28!  I would much rather give the boys something simplistic that encourages the use of their imagination, than a toy that only has one function.   I was given the chance to review Plan toys and I am impressed with their quality and most importantly their use of safe eco-friendly materials.

Plan Toys’ Stacking Tree ($20) is so cool! This stacking set is designed based on the concept of nature. Each wooden piece can be stacked to form different kinds of trees. Children can learn the color variation and size. I took it out of the box and the boys were instantly tugging at my pants saying “mommy play, mommy play.”   Both of them went right to work taking the pieces off the spindle and re-stacking them how they saw fit.  Monkey  loves just spinning the pieces on the spindle, and stacking them as well.   They loved doing this over and over and after I put it up earlier in the day, they went right back to it after they woke up.  So far they have stacked according to color, and mixed it up, there is no right or wrong way for little imaginations.

We also go the opportunity to try Plan Toys redesigned 50 blocks ($20). The set contains 36 natural blocks and 14 colored blocks. These blocks encourage creativity, expands children’s thinking ability, and stimulates their imagination.  These are the blocks that I remember as a child, and I spent many hours creating buildings and bridges, and stacking them over and over. Both Bubs and Monkey are huge fans of blocks and “building towers.”   It is so much fun to watch them, because they get excited when they can stack blocks to make a tall tower.  Bubs can be found in such deep concentration that you can see his little tongue sticking out…it is so fun to watch and see what they come up with.

Plan toys has a huge selection of unique and timeless toys to choose from.  I have already started a list of things that I would like to get the boys.   They would make great Christmas presents for a special little someone in your life and the prices are reasonable and the toys are well made.  I give Plan toys the “Mommy Seal of Approval!”

I’m a bloggin fool, showing some bloggin love

Thank you to Tanya over at Mommy Goggles for nominating me for this lovely award!  I luv ya girlie, you are the best!

Here’s the scoop!

1. Slap this baby up on your blog. Don’t be shy.
2. Link to the giver
3. Nominate up to seven other fab blogs.
4. Post links to those super fly blogs your nominating.
5. Leave messages for your recipients on their blogs…so they can feel as special as you do!

So her here are the blogs I pass this award on to.

1. Adventures in Mommyland
2. Frog in My Soup

One of those days

Did you ever just have one of those days where you just wanted to stay in bed and hide? Both of the boys are sick again and I am just beat.   I was trying to get out a post here and just fell right to sleep.   We are due to get ear tubes for Bubs next week and it appears he may have another ear infection.   Neither one of them can breathe at the moment which makes sleeping next to impossible.   Hopefully by tomorrow,I will be up and running again.   When the bubbas are sick it seems the days get longer and I run out of gas a lot quicker.  I feel like superwoman some days!

I voted today

Well, I stumbled out of bed at 5:30 am this morning to go up and get my vote in.   It only took me 45 minutes but I am glad I got there early because about 15 minutes after I arrived the line wrapped the building.  I stood in line amongst all the quiet people, and wondering who everyone was voting for.   If you have ever been through an election it is usually not posh to talk about who you are voting for anyway.  I wasn’t in the mood to talk as I was up about 3 hours earlier than I wanted to be, my hair standing on end, in my sweats, and out in the cold.  Needless to say I was proud to wear my “I VOTED” sticker all day!  I crashed with the boys in the afternoon for close to 3 hours!  LOL   I hope whoever is president knows what he is doing, I worry more now because this will effect my children.  The world is a scary place!

Uno Flash!

I can remember playing the simple Uno card game as a child and I loved playing it with family on a Friday night.  We would order in pizza, have special snacks and we would play all night.   A few years back my husband and I bought Uno Attack, which was so much fun.  You never knew if you would get a whole handful of cards thrown out at you on your turn.   Sometimes I get so involved with my game that I would forget to yell out UNO! and well then id have to draw more cards!

Uno has been in the family for years, and I have always enjoyed the new takes on the game.  Even still, just the classic Uno game is still just as fun.  So now there is Uno Flash!

About the game:

Forget everything you thought you knew about UNO! Clockwise? Counterclockwise? Nope; it’s totally random! This exciting electronic version selects who’s next, so you have to stay alert. Did you blink? Uh-oh, you missed your turn and time ran out. It’s the fast, crazy game that will keep you guessing, on your toes and raring to go. And just when you think you can relax and take a breath, you still need to remember to yell UNO. Requires 3 AA batteries, included. Retails for ($35).

This game is so much fun for anyone.  The suggested age range is for ages 7-11 but Uno games are perfect for family game nights, as well as, for having friends over for mvie and cards.  It is good wholesome fun that doesn’t involve the TV or anything high tech, which, as  Mom, I love.  It would be perfect for holiday giving this year and is definitely on my list!  You can find Uno Flash at most retailers like Amazon.com or ToysRUs.

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