'Tis the Season

It is becoming a new Christmas tradition for my family that Santa cannot deliver. I foolishly thought that this holiday season would be different as I was lucky enough to preorder one of this year’s so-called “hot items” more than two months before Christmas. Apparently, this was a false sense of hope because the “inability to fulfill your order” email came this week. So I called Toys-R-Us and talked to one of their non-helpful, unconcerned representatives. He offered me 10% off and free shipping on my next purchase, but no solution as to how one can go about obtaining an item that was ordered two months in advance now that Toys-R-Us has written off said order. What he did tell me was that Toys-R-Us is obligated to fulfill individual store orders so that those stores have their promised stock, but failed to see my point about people that are poaching these items from stores to resell them for profit… the same toy that my child should be opening Christmas morning.

A few weeks ago, I came by a hard to find toy while shopping and snagged it to put under my Christmas tree. There were four more of this toy at the store and I thought about purchasing all of them, but not for the purpose of resale. I wanted to save these toys from the miserable greedy misers that take them away from children to turn a buck. Not only has Toys-R-Us not held up their end of our sale, but their policy of delivering to their stores first enables resellers to make such items both unattainable and unaffordable to the average family. Personally, I think the idea of waiting in-lines for stores to open in hopes of hunting down that elusive gift is a bit insane but, if you’re willing to go to those lengths for your child, kudos to you. The point that I am trying to make is that, if people with no intention of keeping that special gift weren’t snatching them up to make a profit, it could save a lot of Santa’s helpers hours in the cold.