Don’t worry, Nathaniel is fine!
First off, it is now a fact that we have a dog. Yes Fenway chased a cat and a bird out of our yard! It is about time!!! And no better creatures to chase out other then a cat and a bird!
In other news I got Nathaniel’s carseat… sort of. I ordered it over the weekend and it came yesterday. I was so excited as I saw UPS drive up. Then I saw the box. This is how the box looked. I was afraid to open the box for fear that I couldn’t return it if I did. So I contacted the store online where I got it, and they told me to open it and see if the seat itself is damaged. So I took lots of photos of the box from many angles (the bottom of the box to the right of my hand, had a slight bulge to it as well). Then I opened the box carefully and took photos of that.
As you can see the box was crushed to the top of the seat. At this point I am scared. This is a Cybex Aton 2. Cybex says that if your seat is in ANY accident that it needs to be replaced. This includes if I took the van to the store (without the children) and someone rear ended me but the seats were in the car, I would have to replace them. So low speed (with damage to the car) crashes count. Certainly a crush like this, would be on par with the seat being in an accident!
While I had the seat out I thought I would see how it worked with the new stroller. Good, but not great. The canopy stinks on this seat, but I knew that when I got it. I like the red though!
Well after texting Tony about the issues, he tells me he doesn’t want to deal with a seat that has had it’s box crushed like that. It isn’t like this is ANY other piece of baby equipment. It is a carseat that needs to be able to withstand physics that I have no understanding of. The seat appears to be fine, but like I said in my earlier example, a seat that was in a low speed (with damage to the car) wreck, would show little damage too. So I contacted the company to return the seat and get one that wasn’t damaged in transit. Oh and by the way, this warehouse where this seat came from, is about 1.5 hours away. This seat didn’t travel very far… after it got to the distributer that is.
The company where we got the seat says that they will issue a call back for the package and someone should be here today to pick up the seat. Cool. However they refuse to send us a new seat when they get this seat. They want me to order the seat again. Strange customer service if you ask me!
So today comes. I box the seat back in the box. It is waiting there. I am waiting and waiting all day. Max is being Max and exhausting me. All I want to do is take a nap with him. Finally I see a speeding UPS truck go down our street and they don’t stop. I give it a few minutes but then I decide to call UPS asking them about it. They ask me for a tracking number and I don’t have one. They can’t help me without a tracking number.
So I contact the merchant. I tell them I have the seat boxed up in my entry way and I want it GONE. I need a tracking number to do this. They write back and say that someone will be here tomorrow to pick it up. They also give me a tracking number. I call UPS back and I say, look I have been waiting around all day today and I don’t want to do it tomorrow too. I offer to drop the seat off at the UPS customer center or a UPS store. They inform me that they can’t come out today (not the question I asked, but still) and that they will be here tomorrow between 9 am and 7 pm tomorrow. I am fuming at this point! I have to waste another day to see UPS driver zip by my house and not pick it up again (yeah we have dealt with that with UPS too).
Oh and while I am waiting for the UPS driver today. I notice that a Cybex representative is online on a message board that I heard about this seat on. It is a message board for people that are REALLY in to carseat safety. So I send him a message asking about the damage to the box and if I should have been worried to begin with. He says no. I find that very odd. But I am still not comfortable using the seat and I paid a fortune for the seat, so I want what I want!! I don’t think it is unreasonable for me to expect the box to be square and not crushed when I get the carseat.
Tony and I are now debating waiting and getting another seat that is about to come out. It would fit our stroller, it comes in red, and I have contacted one of the websites that sells it and they have a warehouse about 30 minutes away. They said that when they get the seat, I can pick it up in person! We are just trying to figure out if we like this other seat just as well.
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