No me gusta Babies R Us

Ugh!  I'm SO frustrated with Babies R Us.  Right before I got pregnant with The Princess, a Babies R Us opened up about a mile from us.  I thought it would be heaven.  I was WRONG!  When I first went to register there my SIL who was 6 months ahead of me with baby #1 cautioned me that their customer service could be difficult.  Well it wasn't my only registry but I was excited and did it anyway.  It took FOREVER just to get someone to show up at the registry desk to get us started.  That was my first experience there.  Then every time I've gone into the store, out of the 10 check stands that they have, none are open and you must go to the customer service desk.  So you end up in a line with everyone else who is returning, etc.  Pain in the booty!  So my last straw came last week.  After The Princess's 4 month Dr. appt. we needed to get her some liquid vitamin D.  We still have credit to Babies R Us and I had a coupon (don't even get me STARTED on all of the exclusions on their coupons but it does sort of play into this story) so we went there.  I had read every exclusion on the coupon to be sure that our vitamins would be covered.  No exclusion on vitamins.  Perfect.  Not so much.  When I went to checkout, (at the customer service desk of course) the girl couldn't get the coupon to work.  Mind you-it's from THEIR store on one of THEIR receipts.  She finally calls someone.  Together they determine that since the vitamins are made by a formula company that they are considered formula.  Uh...no.  They are not.  Just because my washing machine is made by GE it is not also a refrigerator.  So I came home and contacted their customer service.  They emailed me back wanting the store number and I got a canned email back.  No attempt to try to rectify the situation, just a "Thanks for your email. Sorry it happened." email.  I felt that they should have at least offered to honor my coupon and send me the couple bucks it would've saved me, even if it was store credit.  Am I out of line on this one?  Are all Babies R Us stores like this because I haven't heard much in the way of "good" regarding them?  Thankfully between SuperTarget across the street and Amazon.com I can get The Princess's items elsewhere as soon as I use up our credit.  I'd like to hear what others think.

Here's the email from customer service if you're interested:

Thank you for contacting the "R" Us Family.

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us. We value your opinion and as a company, we work hard to ensure appropriate Customer Service is provided into all aspects of our business, especially at the store level. We are disappointed when we learn we have fallen short of our goal. We would like to offer our apology and please be assured, your comments and suggestions are extremely important to us and will be shared with the appropriate department in order to rectify the situation.

Thank you, once again, for contacting the "R" Us Family.

Gift Cards Are My Cryptonite

I must say that I am thankful for every gift card/certificate I have received. The giver was thinking of me and blessed me by using their own money to show me love.  I have never been ungrateful.  That may be my problem.  You see, when I have a gift card in my wallet it stays there for a ridiculous amount of time.  I never want to "waste" it.  I treasure them so much I don't want them to be used for nothing-ness.  Lately my husband has taught me a valuable lesson.  He had gift cards to home improvement stores and since we have been scraping to make ends meet, he used those gift cards to buy things we needed at the house (light bulbs, etc.).  He even had CostcoCash that we used for groceries.  These were presents given to him over the years.  They belonged to him but used them for our family.  I felt awful.  He looked at me and said, "When we get into a better financial state, I can use regular money for what I need or want.  Right now this is what we need to do."  That was so selfless of him that I really treasured it.  Being one to always look for the bargain, I have been shopping around for "The Baby Whisperer" book.  The best deal I could find was on half.com including shipping.  However, I have gift cards for Amazon.com (I loove Amazon).  I didn't want to "waste" them by paying more for the book.  Then I realized that by using the gift cards I am still getting a book for me (not really that selfless) and not taking any money out of our family funds.  Yes I paid a few dollars more, but in reality I paid nothing.  Sometimes the things Hubby says are really wise.  :)