Disappointed birthday boy - fuming parent - help me word a letter to toysrus please.

[Aero]

Today is ds2's fourth birthday and so far, not going great. We bought him this, and went to st it up last night.

On opening the box, I thought it strange that the original seals had been broken and the box obviously re-sealed. Then, once opened, two of the legs were badly damaged. This ld me to believe it had been sold before and returned, then sold again, to us. Annoying to say the least.

Went to return it this morning and get to the store only to find that they're closed for stocktaking (not in itself a problem usually, but coupled with the inconvenience and disappointment and the fact that that was his only present from us, then it only served to make me extremely irritated), hence we can do nothing about it today. Tomorrow his birthday will have passed and it's not the same iyswim.

How can I put in words my disappointment, frustration, anger (re selling a returned product), and inconvenience at the 6-mile pointless trip this morning. Not only do I want a replacement/refund, i think compensation isn't out of order either and might go some way to restore my faith in them. Hmph. Back after the school run.............

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Phone them.
They'll still answer even if they are stocktaking.
See if they will get a replacement ready for you to collect today.

sorry that this happened to your poor ds, but on a brighter note i have seen them cheaper £19 in home bargains, £45 in woolwworths this was last week though hope you can sort this out.

I did phone thm HC - that's what I thought too, and I'd hoped they'd take pity on my situation, but message said they are closed for stocktaking and only security staff wre on site. Hmmmmmmmmmm . They have a lot of security staff then as there were a fair number of cars parked in the car park!

I looked for the Woolies one dd666 and couldn't find it online. None to be found in our local store either, though I didn't look in their catalogue. Have never heard of home bargains.

Is it worth ringing their Head Office, do you think?

we have fair sized woolies, think was chad valley one if that helps

Have phoned HO and a nice lady gave me customer complaints number. Hav called them and explained and another very nice lady is going to call them ahead of my visit tomorrow and also call me before I set out to let me know who to speak to when I get there. They were very apologetic (making me feel a bit better), so I'll go in the morning and take it from there.

is he school/nursery in the morning? could be a suprise for when he gets home if so!
glad ho were helpful

Grrrr. Very bad, selling damaged goods as new. Sale of Goods Act says goods must be as described (so brand new in this case) and fit for the purpose for which they are sold.

Hope they are suitably apologetic tomorrow. What a pain in the bum.

It is a pain edam, but I'm fling a but calmr now. It's the end of a stressful day and I have wine.

I also have to return his other big present (Underground Ernie train set) which was from his Granny to Amazon as there was a load of pieces missing, so it's been a bit of a day for faulty products. Thankfully, th saving grace was the 'Phatwheels' track from tesco which is like hotwheels, but a fraction of the price. It's in full working order and will be on it's second set of batteries before long!

sorry - my 'e' is temperamental. Meant 'feeling a bit calmer' lol

You'll be lucky. Toys R Us have a unique and thankfully unrivalled approach to customer service.

Firstly you will have to queue for 3/4 of an hour. Then you will have to explain your dilemma to an acned and adenoidal teenager on minimum wages who thinks you are a pain. Which of course you will be. He will refer the matter to his boss. You will have to wait another 3/4 of an hour. His boss will be an older and more depressed version of him. After 2 hours of saying the same things over and over VERY SLOWLY, they will get the picture. You will then have to collect a replacement toy, queue for 3/4 of an hour to get it replaced. You might as well not bother asking for compensation because you won't get it and you will then have to spend the entire afternoon arguing with them as well as the morning ...

Oh Lordy Quattro - I'm soooooooooo looking forward to tomorrow, and I know you're right too. that collection queue thing takes forever.

Oh, poor ds - hope you manage to get it sorted without too much trouble Aero. Similar thing happened to us with one of ds1's birthday presents last year (Hot Wheels Criss Cross Crash), which we bought from Argos. Luckily I noticed the box had been opened and re-sealed when I got home with it (the assistant had, I think deliberately, shoved it in the bag very quickly so I didn't notice before leaving the shop ) so we checked it then and found some of the bits looked well used and were physically broken. We suspect someone had broken theirs, bought a new one and pinched the bits they needed to make theirs work again, put the broken ones back in the box and taken it back to Argos saying they didn't want it . I took it back the day after I bought it and the same assistant had the nerve to query me very suspiciously about why it didn't work grrrrr. We did get our money back though (they had no other stock at the time).

Anyway, now I check everything like that as soon as I buy it which we did with their Christmas presents, avoids disappointment on the day at least.

i brought exactly the same thing for my son for xmas,. only real present from me, and the same thing tons of screws missing, badly damaged parts etc, took hours to try and make ok on xmas eve i predicted about an hour to set up,,, instead about three hours with hunting around for screws etc to make it ok so that he still had his present for xmas,, phoned up and got nowhere

Funnily enough, when dh and I were re-packing Underground Ernie for collection tomorrow, we noticed double tapd seals! He opened it, so we only noticed tonight when we were putting it back in the box.

Amazon are sending a new set out immediately though and dhl are collecting tomorrow, so customer service is good so far.

The Toysrus complaints lady was very nice and sounded genuinely annoyed herself that ds didn't get a presnt from his parents. I'm sure it'll all be ok in the end. It was just infuriating that they weren't open today to sort things out. Also, she said they could just order replacement legs for the table so I don't have to to take the whole (extremely heavy) thing back. It's in the car already though, so one of the staff will have to assist!

Oh mimiuk - that fills me with drad about putting it together. Perhaps I should get them to put it together for me as compensation. It should fit in the back of a zafira with the seats down............

'dread'

I think the whole of Toys R Us must be having a stock take day because my local one was shut today too. Unless you live near me of course!

I do RG - loads of cars with miffed drivers turning round and leaving today - I might have passed you . All the stores were closed though according to nice lady in CS, so heading to Thurrock to rant would have been no good anyway. Think that's the nearest after our local - that or Canterbury perhaps.

Aha!! I would have been the pissed off pram pusher - i really wanted to buy some bigger babygros for my DD!!

Lol RG - they're open this morning and the wind is howling up there.

No phone call from customer services by the time I got there (although I went early), but the manager knew who I had spoken to and he was also very apologetic. He brought the damaged set in from the car, replaced it and carried the new one out for me. I also got a £5 gift voucher (thought they could have done better), which I accepted as he was suitably pleasant and apologetic, despite only looking about 20yo.

Am still waiting for DHL to collect other duff toy, but a new one has been ordered and will be despatched asap from Amazon.

At least you got it sorted!