As Little Miss A was outgrowing her baby car seat a few weeks ago I looked into what would be the best alternative. At the time there was lots of talk of children being kept rear facing for as long as possible, something that we had never thought of when Little Mr A was small. I looked into all of the options that were available and decided on a Joie Stages car seat. As they can be used from birth Little Miss A could use it straight away and she could remain rear facing up until the age of 4 if we liked.
When the seat arrived we loved it! It fit nicely in our car and Little Miss A looked amazingly comfy in it.
Imagine my disappointment on Friday when I received an e-mail saying that the seat had been recalled as, after further testing some of the seats didn't live up to high enough standards. Obviously with something as important as a car seat I didn't want to take the risk of using it for long so we reserved a new car seat in Toys R Us and went first thing Saturday morning to get it exchanged.
Now, having a 7 seat Vauxhall Zafira we assumed there would be no bother finding a car seat to fit this supposed family car. The seat we had reserved was a Britax First Class - the only other car seat that Toys R Us stocked that could be rear facing up until 15 months. As we were buying the seat from the store they had to check it fit in our car OK. No problem, or so we thought! After spending some time trying to fit the seat in, it wouldn't! It was not a good fit because of the seatbelt and therefore they could not sell it to us.
I was really wanting to keep Little Miss A rear facing for as long as possible, however, we had no choice. All the other seats in Toys R Us were front facing from the 9 month mark (Little Miss A is now both old enough and heavy enough for a front facing seat). Having only a credit note for Toys R Us (having originally paid on Paypal) we were stuck. We couldn't afford to fork out a lot of money to buy a seat from elsewhere and, at the same time, had to have a seat to be able to travel anywhere with Little Miss A!
We decided to try a couple more car seats. Neither of them fit! By this time I was getting quite stressed. What were we supposed to do? And why would no seat fit in our 'family' car?!
Whilst the Toys R Us staff were looking on their system to see what might fit, Big Mr A was searching on his phone and came across the Maxi Cosi Tobi on the Toys R Us website on offer. We knew this would fit as this is the car seat we had had for Little Mr A. An anxious wait then ensued whilst they went to see if they had any in stock and thankfully they had two left!
A quick pop out to the car to check it did fit and we had finally managed to find a seat for Little Miss A - we wouldn't have to take the bus home!
I find it absolutely ridiculous that, in a family car like ours, we could only get a handful of car seats to fit. Surely all car seats should fit?!
We were incredibly impressed with the customer service we received at Toys R Us. From the moment we walked in to sort out the return; to the extremely patient ladies desperately trying to find us a car seat to fit; to the Manager who gave us a 20% discount voucher; and to the lovely lady (we initially spoke to re the return who served us on the till 1 and a half hours later!) who gave Little Mr A a Lego Chima keyring for being so patient; thank you!
It really wasn't a great start to our weekend but Little Miss A is enjoying her new, new car seat!
