Our due date (November 26th) is approaching fast, and thankfully we were able to get a lot of baby-related things done this weekend. My biggest accomplishment was putting together our new crib. Casey ordered it from the Sears website on Tuesday, and it was ready for pick-up at the Grand Forks store on Wednesday. Some friends let us borrow their minivan for an hour on Thursday so we could get it home. Sadly, the hatch back of our 3 wasn’t wide enough for this thing’s box.
My goal was to get the crib put together after work on Friday, but Casey quickly found a couple of really deep gouges on one of the side pieces. Before doing anything else, we decided to see if Sears would replace the piece. Casey called our local store, only to encounter a bunch of employees who didn’t seem to have any concern for our problem. They first wanted to pass us off to Child Craft, the manufacturer, but it clearly said on the box that any damage had to be handled at the dealer. Unfortunately, since we purchased our crib on the Sears website, the local store didn’t seem to want any part of it – they suggested that we return the whole thing, something I was dreading. Getting everything back in the box and then getting that back to the store would be an afternoon project in itself.
Next, we tried calling Child Craft to see if they could send a replacement piece out, but since they’re based in Indiana, they were already closed for the day. Next, a call to Sears corporate revealed that we needed to work with our pick-up store, which we weren’t looking forward to after the previous encounter over the phone. Casey called them back, only to be put in a call loop after no one in the office would answer. After over 10 minutes, she finally got through. The person on the other end took her message and said she would have one of the managers on duty the next day call us. At that point, we were prepared to return the crib and take our business somewhere else if our interaction with her followed the same pattern as our other calls to Sears.
By 2:00 pm Saturday afternoon we still hadn’t received a call and we need to run some errands, so we decided to bring the crib piece along with us and stop by the store in person. When we got there, a sales woman paged the manager, who met us by the baby furniture section after a few minutes. We explained the situation and asked what, if anything, could be done. She said they could order us a replacement, but the company was pretty slow – it often took three to six weeks for parts to arrive. Then, she offered exactly what we were looking for – she took down the model number of the crib and went to the back to see if they had any more in stock. They did, and she offered to exchange pieces with us on the spot. She completely saved our experience with Sears, and we’re now likely going to return to the store and buy the matching dresser/changing table from her.
Anyway, after we returned home with the new piece, I got back to work and had the crib put together within an hour and a half. Not too bad, considering that we both thought it would take a lot longer. Below are some photos of the process and the end product.
