One would think a year after getting married that you'd no longer be frustrated by a wedding registry. Thanks to an unpleasant first encounter with returning duplicate gifts at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, we've been staring at unwanted duplicate gifts gathering dust in our bedroom for over six months. Yesterday's experience at Bed, Bath, and Beyond proved even more unpleasant than the first and will be our last trip to that chain.
I used to love Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I've shopped there since the mid-1990s. We chose them for one of our registries because they had a wide range of quality products offered for a fair price. They also offered convenience; a couple could set up a registry without ever having to set foot in the store. But their arbitrary and inconsistent registry policies are too much. Registry items can be selected from online goods and gifts can be purchased online, but returned items may not be exchanged for online goods. Worse yet is that in-store credit cannot be issued for returned items. You must purchase replacement goods from their inventory. Don't like what they have? Take your unwanted gifts back home with you and return another day with gifts in hand.
Last December, cubes and I braved the holiday crowds to return eight Noritake place settings. We'd requested twelve and had received twenty. Attempting to return anything during the holiday shopping season was our first mistake. I carefully stacked the boxes, four each, in two IKEA shopping bags. cubes took one bag. I took the other. Let me tell you place settings are heavy. We loaded up the car and headed to our nearby Bed, Bath, and Beyond store.
We patiently circled the parking lot, waiting for a space to open up. When it looked like we'd finally found a spot, a guard forced us to move on, the car behind us scoring the spot. Undaunted we parked across the street in 1 hour metered parking. Dropped our quarters in and walked back to the store. Having thought this would be a short trip, we'd planned on grabbing lunch after our errands. In the store, we were greeted with a four person deep line at the Customer Service counter. We decided that we'd exchange the dishes for gift cards and come back another day.
After 15 minutes, it's our turn. A woman politely tells us that she cannot issue a gift card, we need to find items in the store so that we can make the exchange. She's about to hand us back our dishes, our heavy dishes. We look at one another and decide that we should be able to find something. Our second mistake - not coming to the store prepared with what items we want.
Off we go to the pots and pans section. We know we want AllClad and we know that Bed, Bath, and Beyond sells the line we want. Unfortunately, the line we want is not offered in this store and the other lines have been picked through. First idea shot down.
We'd been told that Bed, Bath, and Beyond had the super-soft towels we'd seen at Macy's. In the linens section, we discover that they don't have the colors we want. Our existing towels were a combination of Black, Charcoal Gray, and Blue. Bed, Bath, and Beyond only had white, cream, or pastel. Second idea shot down.
We know we need a new tea kettle so we decide to pick one up. It proves incredibly difficult to find the tea kettle section. When we finally do locate the proper section, there's only one tea kettle. The brand is OK, but the positioning of the handle guarantees that I'll burn my hand trying to pour steaming, hot water into a cup or French Press. Third idea shot down.
Finally we decide we'll get new down pillows and a mattress pad. Not things that we really need, but things that will at least let us leave this store without eight sets of dishes in tow. We return to the Customer Service desk. The line is now over ten people long. Forty five minutes later, we leave the store, hoping to never need to return something. Luckily we did not return to our car to find a parking ticket.
Our luck holds until June when four more place settings arrive. Our excitement about new gifts fades as we realize we have to go back to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Deciding it would be better to get the unpleasantness over sooner rather than later, we go online. We don't find anything that we need. We pack up the place settings and stash them in a corner of our bedroom, where they'll sit until yesterday, gathering dust, laughing at us.
Yesterday, cubes reached his limit with the place settings taunting him. We sat down and scoured Bed, Bath, and Beyond's online store. We researched their product offerings and compared them to Consumer Search ratings. I armed cubes with a list of items we needed that they sold: a baby monitor, a humidifier, a diaper pail, a water filtration system, and a tea kettle. Off he went. I thought all was going swimmingly until my phone rang and I saw it was cubes. First baby items other than diapers are only sold online. We can't use our exchange for online purchases. Their store selection pales in comparison to their online store front. The humidifier we want, not available in store. The water filtration system, not available in store. They do, however, have a tea kettle. While cubes stands in front of the available faucet filtration systems I research the model numbers he reads off. Finally we find one that's highly recommended. We decide to purchase the system. To cover the remainder of the exchange we'll purchase a bunch of filters - enough to cover us for a few years. On his way back to the Customer Service desk he sees a Vinturi Red Wine Aerator. (Now we have the Vinturi White Wine Aerator and love it. We actually use it for both white and red wines.) He calls me back. After a quick exchange, he puts back the extra filters and checks out with a Vinturi Red Wine Aerator, a Brita faucet filtration system, two replacement filters, and a KitchenAid tea kettle.
I really wish we had taken photos of our experiences so that I could create a black and white silent film set to the music of the Keystone Cops. You'd better understand my level of frustration with Bed, Bath, and Beyond and I'd be able to laugh about the whole ordeal. Seriously, shopping should not be this hard.
I will not be shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond again. I will not purchase a gift for a friend from a Bed, Bath, and Beyond registry. I understand Bed, Bath, and Beyond's goals with forcing couples to make selections from in-store inventory, it helps keeps store costs down. While I understand their goals, their treatment of customers at the expense of the bottom line means they'll now have two less customers.
Crate and Barrel, on the other hand, will keep two customers. Their staff went out of their way to educate us about products, to answer any question - even if asked twice, and to order products from another store. They made creating a registry fun. They even made returns fun. We looked forward to spending our gift cards. They treated us as though we were special and they had nothing better to do with their time than help us.
Of course now that we're pregnant, people are asking where we're registered. I know one place we definitely won't be registered at - Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Based on our experiences with Crate and Barrel, I'd love to try Land of Nod. Unfortunately the closest Land of Nod store is in Seattle, WA. Anyone have any baby registry recommendations? We're looking for a company that has great customer service from initial sale through to returns.
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