Ordering online from Toys “R” Us should really come with a manual. Even for the average online shopper who has acquired a comfort level with the brand. Buying toys shouldn’t be rocket science especially when purchasing from such reputable brand. You’d think so anyway, right? If the level of dissatisfaction arises from an average ordering experience than wait until you hear about the customer service interaction.

The holiday season is around the corner and naturally everyone scrambles for gift ideas. Retailers blow up by the unusually high consumer demand with intent of cashing in on the opportunity. I get it! If I was in the business of toys, the Holiday Season would be the one time of year I’d put forth all my chips and attempt to generate as much revenue as possible.

The Backstory

Naturally, like everyone else on 11/22 my wife decided to place an order for a specific toy that a colleague of her had requested for one of her children. Who orders toys for someone else? Well, my wife does out of act of kindness and generosity. Placing the order in the third week of November was intentional keeping in mind the upcoming busy holiday seasons and ensuring that the toy would arrive in a timely fashion. Boy, was she wrong! After a little over a week of placing the order, she became slightly concerned with the status of delivery considering the lack of a notification or receipt of purchase. You know, that really fancy e-mail you receive in your inbox notifying you of a purchase receipt. Yep, that’s it.

So, as she became concerned with the status of the order a call was placed by her to inquire about the delivery status. Quite the typical and logical step any rational customer would make when concerned about the status of an order they purchased online.

Behold Toys “R” Us Customer Service

In round 1 of customer service interaction, the shenanigans began. The first call my wife placed to Toys “R” Us customer service occurred on 12/03. The gist of initial phone conversation consisted of a statement made by a customer service representative indicating that the order shipped on 11/29. Yet, no e-mail notification was sent out advising on the status of this endeavor. In the midst of the conversation, the customer service representative openly admitted that the order was accidentally lost but now on its way to us. Keep in that that this occurred a little over a week after the order was placed. So, to quickly recap here, Toys “R” Us accidentally loses an order, fails to notify my wife either thru verbal or non-verbal communication, and lastly barely has the decency to admit the fault during a phone conversation initiated by my wife.

A couple of weeks nearly passed by and no communication occurred from Toys “R” Us. She held on patiently in hope for something to happen.

Enter Social Media & Toys “R” Us

Around mid December, my wife approached me with this issue and broke down the current state. At that point I became quite frustrated in practically comprehending the fact that she had been jacked around by poor customer service. Drastic situations call for drastic measures. Being the social-savvy dude that I am, it was time to take a slightly different approach.

A tweet was fired off towards @ToysRUs with intent of bringing the issue to their attention…and crickets.

@ToysRUs Extremely dissatisfied with your customer service. You lose our order & then deny it being lost? On top of it all, it's late.

— Ivan Temelkov (@ivan_temelkov) December 12, 2014

The Twitter approach seemed like a completely failure so I decided to try Facebook. Naturally, expressing my concern on their business page.

Ok, so slight movement on the Facebook side but still no resolution for the dilemma with the order.

The Conclusion

Here we are with December 17th and an order is yet to arrive. My wife did end up reaching out to Toys “R” Us for a second time being given a completely different story. She was told that even though the order shipping later than originally anticipated there was no guarantee that it would arrive any earlier than 12/23. Well, so much for it being a Christmas present, right? Not even a potential express delivery option to make-up for the lost order error?

Last I spoke with my wife this morning, she stated that a refund came thru our bank account for the order. Well, no toy for Christmas I guess and a disappointed colleague to advise on the shenanigans spawned by Toys “R” Us.

Is the customer service really that bad? Judge for yourself. Here’s a screenshot from some of the latest posts on the Toys “R” Us Facebook page.