I don't wanna grow up, I wanna be a Toys'R'us kid...
Yeah. Right. I'm grown up now and on the cusp of transitioning from a one-time HUGE Toys'R'us kid to a TRU Parent and I can honestly say -- WTF happened to this company? It's a total shit show now! Especially this Vaughan Mills location (and the one closer to Sherway - so I assume this shit stink is company wide). It's almost like they shrugged their shoulders and said: "Ah... screw it".
Candidly, I don't shop here as much as I once did, usually stopping in for the odd baby shower or birthday gift for someone else's kid. However, TRU had the easy opportunity to win me over and ensure that my soon to arrive child's purchases would be exclusively bought here for the duration of life, but following our recent experience of completing our baby registry here, forget these jokers.
So what happened?
Let's chat first about the location. Messy, unorganized, and just in utter shambles. It's tragically understaffed, and the staff that is present physically are doing their best to avoid human contact (#millenials). Why are you hiring high school students who are clearly in cell phone withdrawal and angsty?
Pregnant with our first, we could think (at the time) of no better place to register for the baby shower and essentials than Babies'R'Us. No appointment was necessary so we showed up to open our registry up. From beginning to end the experience was just awful. Upon arrival, we had to chase down someone just to come to the registry desk, then once we finally got someones attention we were seated (excited) only to be left to fill out online forms while they attended to other people. As soon as our profile was created we were handed a scanner, and that was the extent of their support - this process could have easily been automated with thousands of dollars on inept staffing saved.
So we have the scanner now and knowing no better we figure this is how it works so left to our own devices we begin haphazardly walking about scanning items off their recommended list. Any new or soon-to-be parent will tell you though that trying to make heads or tails of what your baby will need is hard enough with help... but on your own with zero guidance? You might as well be Tom Hanks in Cast Away trying to ride a bamboo dingy out past the waves. On several occasions we asked staff for advice on some of the most confusing things like bottles, pacifiers, and crib bedding/mattresses. "one sec", "that's not my department", "I'm not sure... that one seems good" were the consistent responses -- where do you find these people?
Worst of all, going back to the general disorder of this location, the selection is extremely limited (2 glider chairs and 3 cribs in store), many products are missing or out of stock, and believe it or not, some of the items available are out of their packages and even broken.
Without being too harsh, I think the experience would have been similar shopping had we made a registry at Value Village or Goodwill.
We completed the registry process, just because, but what should have been an exciting magical experience, felt homogeneous and lackluster... even sad.
Look for my review of Buy Buy Baby (Vaughan) and our polar opposite experience this weekend and the reasons WHY we canceled our registry at Babies'R'Us and moved the entire thing over to Buy Buy Baby -- if you're a new or parent to be, you'll switch as well. read more