Toys R Us Update
So, Toys R Us actually phoned me back, so since I was yelling about them in my last post, I thought I should actually update everyone on what happened. It was...fairly anticlimactic, as suspected? About as useless, but a little less indifferent.
Basically I got an email from the central office saying the issue had been passed to my local branch, and then I didn't hear anything for about a days and wondered if they'd even get back to me, but then on Friday I got an actual phone call from a human being at "head office" who'd called to say she was sorry I couldn't find the doll I was looking for and confirmed that on their system while they had a selection of dolls, she couldn't find any of the ones I'd mentioned. So I assume (particularly given what I found on the national website) that means for the whole country.
She said they did have a selection of dolls from various ethnicities in other parts of the store (a tactic I expected), although to her credit, she didn't try to pass that off as a satisfactory solution to the complaint I'd made and acknowledged that before I had to make the point myself.
She explained that "the buyers" make decisions about what gets stocked and that they used to have a wider variety, but those lines had been discontinued. My understanding was that she was saying they were discontinued at source, as in, the buyers no longer had the option to buy, say, Tiana dolls, because The Princess and the Frog is no longer the latest Disney movie. She specifically said she thought it was because they were from "older lines".
I said I appreciated that and that it might not be Toys R Us' responsibility entirely if the dolls weren't there to be stocked, but I thought it was a shame that these are the dolls that end up discontinued and in those "older lines" instead of being included in the newer ones too.
At which point, she basically said something along the lines of, "Yes, I see," something that didn't mean she was professionally agreeing with my position but that didn't argue with me either.
And I sort of felt I'd said all I could, so I thanked her for calling me and for noting my concern for the future in case they got any more complaints.
So, I dunno. For what it's worth the actual human being I spoke to was pretty nice. I got the impression she was a little embarrassed about the situation - not as in, this is a trivial complaint, but as in, the issue itself and the fact that I was correct on the facts, was embarrassing, and I didn't feel like she was trying to shut me up or convince me it was a manufactured issue, which I was sort of expecting. So that was nice. And I did think it was nice that they actually got someone to look into it and call me back with what they'd found to discuss it with me, instead of sending me an email.
On the other hand, it's not like anything's changed or anything will. I was a little surprised that this apparently is, at least partly, an issue of what Disney will ship out to other stores, if I understood what she was saying about the buyers correctly (and I'm only about 85% sure I did - I did try to get clarification, but you know how the second you hang up after a telephone call that made you nervous, you forget shit?) That's depressing, although I suppose only illustrates the same problem at a different level. The substance of what they said was pretty much what I thought they'd say, just minus some of the dismissive undertones I expected. Which could be indicative of them as a company, or could be indicative of the individual I spoke to.
I also didn't feel like I really did the best job of getting my point across on the phone because I was nervous and I think she was a bit nervous because she was embarrassed by the issue and worried I'd start shouting at her, and I dislike confrontation, so I probably didn't make my points as clearly as I should and there were probably other things I could have asked that I didn't think to because, well, it's not like I really KNOW anything about this issue. So I kinda wish I could have traded my telephone call to someone who could have talked about it more eloquently.
But well, what's done is done. And I mostly just thought I should let people know Part II of what happened.
Basically I got an email from the central office saying the issue had been passed to my local branch, and then I didn't hear anything for about a days and wondered if they'd even get back to me, but then on Friday I got an actual phone call from a human being at "head office" who'd called to say she was sorry I couldn't find the doll I was looking for and confirmed that on their system while they had a selection of dolls, she couldn't find any of the ones I'd mentioned. So I assume (particularly given what I found on the national website) that means for the whole country.
She said they did have a selection of dolls from various ethnicities in other parts of the store (a tactic I expected), although to her credit, she didn't try to pass that off as a satisfactory solution to the complaint I'd made and acknowledged that before I had to make the point myself.
She explained that "the buyers" make decisions about what gets stocked and that they used to have a wider variety, but those lines had been discontinued. My understanding was that she was saying they were discontinued at source, as in, the buyers no longer had the option to buy, say, Tiana dolls, because The Princess and the Frog is no longer the latest Disney movie. She specifically said she thought it was because they were from "older lines".
I said I appreciated that and that it might not be Toys R Us' responsibility entirely if the dolls weren't there to be stocked, but I thought it was a shame that these are the dolls that end up discontinued and in those "older lines" instead of being included in the newer ones too.
At which point, she basically said something along the lines of, "Yes, I see," something that didn't mean she was professionally agreeing with my position but that didn't argue with me either.
And I sort of felt I'd said all I could, so I thanked her for calling me and for noting my concern for the future in case they got any more complaints.
So, I dunno. For what it's worth the actual human being I spoke to was pretty nice. I got the impression she was a little embarrassed about the situation - not as in, this is a trivial complaint, but as in, the issue itself and the fact that I was correct on the facts, was embarrassing, and I didn't feel like she was trying to shut me up or convince me it was a manufactured issue, which I was sort of expecting. So that was nice. And I did think it was nice that they actually got someone to look into it and call me back with what they'd found to discuss it with me, instead of sending me an email.
On the other hand, it's not like anything's changed or anything will. I was a little surprised that this apparently is, at least partly, an issue of what Disney will ship out to other stores, if I understood what she was saying about the buyers correctly (and I'm only about 85% sure I did - I did try to get clarification, but you know how the second you hang up after a telephone call that made you nervous, you forget shit?) That's depressing, although I suppose only illustrates the same problem at a different level. The substance of what they said was pretty much what I thought they'd say, just minus some of the dismissive undertones I expected. Which could be indicative of them as a company, or could be indicative of the individual I spoke to.
I also didn't feel like I really did the best job of getting my point across on the phone because I was nervous and I think she was a bit nervous because she was embarrassed by the issue and worried I'd start shouting at her, and I dislike confrontation, so I probably didn't make my points as clearly as I should and there were probably other things I could have asked that I didn't think to because, well, it's not like I really KNOW anything about this issue. So I kinda wish I could have traded my telephone call to someone who could have talked about it more eloquently.
But well, what's done is done. And I mostly just thought I should let people know Part II of what happened.