My Toys

My Toys is the absolute worst retail experience I have had in many years, which is especially surprising given that this is a family-​run business. I took an old electric train there for repairs twice. Both times, they repaired things I didn’t ask them to, and charged for them. In the second instance, they misplaced my train, literally for about 8 months. They could no longer keep customers’ items in the store because of robberies. So whenever I called to see if I could pick it up, (as in several times a week) they said that the absentee owner couldn’t make it in that day. There was often some family emergency, but those emergencies weren’t always consistent. Eventually they admitted that they couldn’t find the train, and the owner offered to make it right by either paying me fair value for it or replacing it with a similar model. But then they found my train, and it turned out that it still hadn’t been repaired. When they did repair it, they charged me «only» $ 40, although the bill was $ 85. (I imagine the repair I had asked for should have been no more than that $ 40, anyway. But after eight months, I’d have expected the repair to be free.) But worse than that, they claimed the engine was filthy inside, and they had to spend a lot of time cleaning it up — even though they themselves had overhauled it just about two months before the second time I brought it in for repair. I pointed this out, and they said maybe it had gotten dirty during the eight months they had it. First, that should have been their responsibility, not mine. Second, the shoebox I brought the train into the store in was the same box it was returned to me in — and it was still clean inside and out.