Friday, March 27, 2009

I'm gonna have to pull a Stephanie.

Stephanie was our neighbor at our old house/city/state. She could unleash some phenomenal rage. Not on us, on customer (non)service people. It was amazing to watch. Sometimes I think she and hubs should have been married because between the two of them, they could get more free stuff and apologizes in a phone call than I could in a year. Amazing.

So Wal-mart did not let me down. Not only did they ship an opened package with missing parts, they can't send the new parts to me, and they don't have any more in stock. Great. So she told me to call the manufacturer who refused to help me until I registered my product, which would be fine except the nice person who removed the missing parts, also kindly took the registration card. And if that weren't good enough, the registration takes 24 hours to complete and then they would have to ship out the parts. Yay. We leave next week.

But Wal-mart/dvd company won't be the only ones hearing from me today. Our beloved double stroller broke. We haven't used it since the move because it was damaged this summer when I took the kids to the beach. I had it in our roof top carrier and moisture got in, covering the stroller with mildew. I've been thinking it was mold since August, but it just occurred to me that it was mildew and I might be able to clean it! After google searches and posting on cleaning chat boards (yes, there are actually cleaning chat boards) I found that lemon juice and sun will take the mildew right out. I thought even if the lemon juice took the color out of the stroller, it couldn't look worse than it does now, so why not! Can you believe it, 100% clean! Looks like a brand new stroller.

BUT, Hubs folded it up and carried it to the front yard so we could hose it off, and when he opened it up, the side of the frame cracked making the stroller completely unusable. Great. I called COMBI to see what could happen and she said basically nothing. I MIGHT be able to submit a claim and MAYBE could buy a new one at a discount. Woo hoo. Even with a 20% discount, I'm still looking at $200. I WAS TICKED. I LOVED this stroller. It was recommended by a good friend (oh and her's recently broke too) and I recommend it to ALL of my friends. Even complete strangers in Babies R Us. I've probably sold more Combi strollers than any other stroller store. I am a great sales person. Not anymore.

Obviously a stroller that is 80% plastic is bound to break, but come on! I've had an Inglesina Zippy for 4 years and that thing is still perfect and I love it (and it has been used and abused). Ugh. Really the kiddos don't use the stroller anymore, but we need it for our upcoming trip to Disney. I refuse to buy another stroller (because honestly, I think I could have already put BOTH kids through college with the money spent on strollers we have), so we'll see if Combi can help. If not, I'll have to see if they let me bring a wheelbarrow to the Magic Kingdom.

2 comments:

Lianne said...

Bummer. I hate it when I spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning something only to have it break.

I would recommend renting a Disney stroller. We never did it, but we always wished we had by the end of each Disney day. The drawback is that they all look alike, save for the tag with your name on it. There's always a fleet of them parked outside each ride. At least you wouldn't have to take it through baggage claim if you are flying and it wouldn't take up valuable trunk space if you are driving.

mommychick said...

I couldn't wait for the day when both kids were old enough for a disney stroller. They really do rock. BUT, we are park hoppers and I would worry about them running out and having 2 crazy kids with no way to contain them.

Sigh. We'll work it out.