Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Brides Beware, Target Registry Sucks!

My number one piece of advice for brides? Don't register at Target!

Prior to my engagement, I loved Target. I shopped there at least once a week even if I didn't need anything. They have good deals and I love their clearance. Naturally, when it came time to register for wedding gifts, I was excited to register at one of my favorite stores, Target.

(FYI: I work retail. I do not work at Target. I do not work for any of Target's competition. This is completely unrelated to my work other than I expect good customer service as every consumer should.)

My then fiance and I headed to our local Target one day in January to register for fabulous things for our new house. We started our registry, got our scanner and spent the next hour or so wandering the store scanning items we wished to own.

When we arrived home, I excitedly located our registry on Target's website so that I could link to it on our wedding website for our guests' convenience. Imagine my surprise to discover several items we most definitely did NOT scan during our trip to the store. BABY items. I am so glad that I discovered the errant items and was able to delete them before any of our guests got the wrong idea!

So, I fixed the mistakes, kept an eye our registry, added and deleting things as needed. I had my bridal shower in May and I had a lot of fun watching our registries and trying to guess who bought us what.

Unfortunately, I did have to return a couple items after the shower due to some miscommunication. I had gift receipts and the items still had all of their original packaging still attached and intact. Simple transaction right? Not at my local Target! The girl working at the guest services desk preceded to accuse me of using the items I was returning and made a big deal about taking them back. I remained polite and calm and gladly took the in store credit given because I loved Target and knew I would use it.

Luckily, we did not have to return any items to Target after our wedding.

Fast forward to about a month after our wedding. I receive an email from Target congratulating us on our wedding (4 weeks later) and informing us that we would receive a (one time use) coupon for 10% off to help complete our registry. Well, cool! We received several Target gift cards and I had my eye on a few things off our registry that we didn't get. I though I'd just wait for the coupon and use them all together!

As of Friday, we have been married for 5 months. I have yet to receive that coupon. And I have yet to use any of our Target gift cards.

I wrote to Target through their website to let them know how disappointed I was in my experience. That was 1 month ago. I have yet to hear from them.

The moral of my story? Don't register at Target if you want to be able to return things or complete your registry.

I am not the only one to have these complications. I highly suggest reading wedding message boards to hear about others' experiences with Target. Weddingbee and The Knot are good places to start.

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