Babies R Us

Shitty customer service, aisles in store don’t match aisles marked on registry paperwork, wandering aimlessly without any employees trying to help you.

I registered with Babies r us for my son who was due May 2014. I had a baby monitor since than and it just randomly stopped working. I called in and spoke to the manager Bryan about a possible exchange. He said as long as you have receipt it should be fine. Granted I went in there and exchanged the old monitor with a new upgraded version Motorola with no problems. Bryan was a very helpful manager and I am very grateful this wasn’t an issue!

This spot just seemed weird and old but it was a great experience. I’ve always passed by here not looking twice but then came a reason I did need to visit and I was pleasantly surprised. First off, employee named Robert (didn’t forget since it’s my brother’s name, nothing weird) pretty much made the whole thing worthy of four stars. The store itself looked good and everything well organized. We went to do a baby registry so we visited every area there.
Great selection, great organization, great employees. There’s not much left.

Another painless visit. Ran in and out on a Saturday morning to grab a gift card for a friend’s baby shower. It was quiet around 11am or so. Got my card and was out in about 10 minutes. Can’t beat that on a busy shopping day!

Does this store have tons of bottles, diapers, formula and nearly any other baby supply item you need? Sure, but so does Buy Buy Baby (and Amazon). The associates working at this store are dreadful compared to Buy Buy Baby and Amazon though.
After moving from London, UK to Chicago, I needed a few basic items because I had sold similar items with UK plugs/​outlets before moving back to the States. I approached the counter with my baby, an AngelCare Monitor (btw, flagging down an associate to open the locked storage area for the monitors=time consuming & annoying), a humidifier and a few toys. The cashier looked at my baby and coo’ed «what’s wrong sweetie, didn’t your Mom have money to buy these for you when you were born?» Huh? I was so caught off guard that I actually started explaining why I was just buying the items now for my 6 month old. What if I really hadn’t had the money to buy these items for my baby when she was born? Can’t imagine that I would have left the store feeling very good about myself if that were the case.
The cashier also looked at my license at one point and commented «wow, you look so young and pretty in this picture. When was it taken?» Ouch, what a zinger. Hey lady, 6 months of not sleeping through the night due to newborn has definitely aged me… no reminders needed that I need a massive Botox touch-​up and a long nap.
Unilocalers, Buy Buy Baby is a mere mile away from Babies R Us. Please skip this store and head there instead.

This is a update on my frequent visits to this store since the birth of my son. I would have to give it negative stars if possible. First of all there is absolutely not enough staff for checkout. There are a few cashier lines but they only have two people working no matter how long the lines are. Second I have not seen such terrible customer service period. Today I went in to the store to use a coupon for toy r us diapers. I was told when I was able to check out that you can’t use that coupon on the «value pack» of diapers. There was no stipulation on the coupon that I cannot use it except that it had to be toy r us «value» diaper exceeding 70 ish diapers. When I said that does not make sense I was bad mouth back saying it made plenty of sense. At that time I stormed out of the store. If I could have thrown the coupon back at the cashier without getting in trouble with the police I would have. The only reason why people have to shop here is that they have limited choices. This store is terrible period! Third of all just check out the inventory control, you have items on the shelf such as a tommy tippee bottle set that cleared someone has used and return with scotch tape over the box. You need some quality control on your shelves. I am going to be going to BUY BUY BABY once I finish using all my giftcards that I received here.

I love this store! This Babies R Us is the best one in the area — it has everything you could ever want and need for your baby. The staff is super helpful and accomodating. The manager agreed to exchange a stroller and car seat for me to a different color, even though I purchased the original ones at a different store. This store always has great sales, and everytime you make a purchase, you get coupons for your next visit. Also, they have a section of nice maternity clothes, which I found are hard to come by. The selection of products is huge, so everytime I go there, I end up spending more time than anticipated browsing and shopping.

I don’t know what kind of crack the people who run this place are smoking. I have had mainly problems here, beginning with the moment I walk in the door. Although I was immediately approached by a million employees, I didn’t need any help yet. I knew how to get to the car seat section, despite the store’s illogical layout, because I had been there before. Then, once I was in the section and found a car seat I liked, they had the item on display but no tag for it or any boxes containing it. Of course, this is when the employees became scarce. I decided to just try to find it online, since the seat cost enough to qualify for free shipping, and the gift card I have can be applied to online purchases.
Then I wandered into the furniture section. While the items were WalMart quality, these are not WalMart prices. I need a $ 600 finished plywood nightstand why? Oh, that’s right, I don’t. Nobody does! I did have an offer of help from an employee here, so I asked if they stocked rugs, and I was told they did in a nearby section. OK!
Well, no. Not OK. There were two rugs I could buy alone, or several sold in a pack with a themed bedspread and other décor items. Mainly, they were Pepto Pink with bubblegum flowers or Disney-​themed, with little selection and no neutral colors. My child is not a NASCAR driver; she does not require corporate sponsorship. Pass.
On my way out, I did notice they have maternity apparel here, which is a nice feature that some competitors don’t have. Well, it would be nice if there were any sense of organization to it. The racks I looked at had a jumble of sizes and apparel types, with nursing tanks and pajamas crammed alongside dresses and jeans. After a few moments I decided that if the racks were this messy I didn’t want to even see a fitting room (not that I could figure out where one even was, if they have one) and decided to leave. Nobody said a peep to me on my way out, either.
This was my third or fourth visit to this store, and every time I come here, I shake my head. They are out of things all the time. Their registry printouts are not accurate about what is in stock or where I can find it. My friends have horror stories about things being auto-​added to their registries that they did not want, because the store replaces any discontinued item with something they consider similar, without contacting the parent/​s. This is how I accidentally bought a sports franchise onesie for somebody that turned out to be not emblazoned with the logo of the family’s favorite team, but the team’s rival. Oops.
I don’t know how this chain can stay open or why it is so popular. Maybe it’s all the adorable baby clothes? In any case, I am glad I didn’t register here and will continue to only come here when I have a gift card or am shopping from somebody else’s registry.
One good thing I can say is that the people in the portrait studio are pretty efficient. While there were closed eyes in half the pictures we had taken here, we were in and out in a reasonable amount of time. Since the Schaumburg Buy Buy Baby doesn’t have a portrait studio in it, this might be your best bet for baby portraits when Target is all booked.

This is probably my favorite baby store in the area. I always have good luck finding what I’m looking for, I come across good deals, and *most* of the employees are very helpful.
As another reviewer mentioned, they have a great selection of shoes — even in the itty bitty sizes (2!!), which I was more than pleased to stumble upon. I love the Tommee Tippee brand of bottles, which is only sold at BRU.
Every time I walk through the store, I always a fun new thing I didn’t know about (Boogie Wipes, Pacifier Wipes…). They also have a good selection of the big ticket items (car seats, strollers, cribs, gliders).
I also registered here when I was pregnant and had no problems with any part of the process.
Definitely a fan of this place — I certainly recommend it for all you mommies out there, soon-​to-​be moms, and people shopping for baby gifts!

There are good Babies R US stores! This is not one of them.
The employees here are apathetic at best and nonexistent at worst. It is a HUGE store and trying to track somebody down is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. When you do FINALLY find somebody they don’t know what they are talking about. SERIOUSLY. Train your employees, it is embarrassing how little they know about the products they are supposed to sell!
I’ve had employees give me blank, vacant stares when I ask questions about products, and I’ve had employees practically chase me out of the store when it’s time for them to go home. Um, when I worked in retail, we stayed until the last customer left. Not a good way to increase business! There are usually only one or two registers open at once – and you are obscenely lucky if they open two. Expect long waits and no help.
Buy Buy Baby now accepts competitor’s coupons! See you in hell, Babies R US!

Just went in for the first time ever tonight. I really like the selection of Infant size 2 shoes, these are hard to come by. The clothes were cute. The concept of pacifier wipes was new to me and I was intrigued by it. The only negative was that the diapers were totally overpriced. The Pampers I priced were 22 cents per diaper.

Not too bad. I was shopping for an expectant mother. I volunteered to tackle the purchases for one of our employees due in less than a month. Veronica was an awesome help in the clothing department and found everything that I needed from the registry list. Clothing prices were fine but everything else was super expensive. I had a budget but wasn’t able to purchase as much items as I wanted due to a budget set by my company.
But there was a creepy guy who worked there who kept staring at me shopping. At least ask me if I need help, don’t just stare haha

This place is a little chaotic, but there’s a TON of stuff. Tammy had registered me and she was really really nice but I haven’t been back since. Will keep you posted.

I received a couple baby gifts that someone had bought for us back in April. I didn’t see them until a couple weeks ago, but this is not unusual. Some of the stuff I received for my baby shower were purchased months before the actual shower. Why? People like to buy baby stuff.
But the items I received were items I didn’t need anymore, now that my baby is a few months old. My friends (who are childless) of course didn’t realize this. So I took the gifts to the store, complete with the gift receipts, to exchange for store credit.
DENIED! I was told that since the 90-​day window was up, these brand new gadgets were not returnable for anything, not even store credit.
So I shopped around the store, then waited in line for 15 minutes while one of the apparently two clerks in the entire store capable of ringing someone up (the others were apparently perfectly capable of looking at the growing lines behind the checkout lanes but not capable of doing anything about it) shot the breeze with someone taking out a credit card, all to be told that it was «against store policy» to take these things back.
As a side note, it is also apparently against store policy to have a store that is wheelchair accessible, much less stroller accessible. Stuff was strewn across every aisle I was in, to the point where I gave up even looking for one of the things I was in there to buy (car seat base). Also, pregnant women aren’t supposed to fall – so this is an obvious safety hazard you would think this store would realize.
Now this is a baby store, and one would think that it should serve, oh I dunno, families with babies. Busy families, who receive gifts from people who mean well but sometimes buy well in advance. Families trying to navigate through aisles with strollers. Families who are already pinched as it is – did I mention that this place is around 30−40% more expensive than Buy Buy Baby, which is just down the street?
You’d think that a baby store would have a friendly return policy, clean aisles that are safe for strollers and pregnant women, staff who care about such things, and reasonable prices. Sad to say, but Babies R Us has none of these.
Ladies, don’t register here, please. Not only is it unsafe for you to walk around this store, but there aren’t a lot of Babies R Us stores around, and I know from experience that Toys R Us doesn’t carry most of what appears on baby registries. You don’t want your family and friends paying through the nose what they could get elsewhere much cheaper and with much better customer service. And trust me, you don’t want to go through the aggravation of an unrealistic return policy.
I registered through Buy Buy Baby, and these folks know service. When I registered, they catered to everything my pregnant self needed, let me try products in the store to make sure I wanted to register for them, offered free bottled water and let me sit down wherever I needed to take a load off my swollen feet. They know their products and have a lot of proactive, knowledgeable salespeople who can help you. Their return policy is solid and they even accept competitor coupons as long as they’re current. Babies R Us just can’t compare.

So yesterday I found out that when items are returned to this store, they just go back on the shelf to be sold again. Nobody checks what condition they are in.
I went to buy a movement and sound monitor to make sure my baby who will only sleep on his tummy won’t stop breathing in the middle of the night. And I would consider that a VERY important item that — when returned — should be sent back to the manufacturer to make sure that absolutely nothing is wrong with it.
There was only one monitor on the shelf (probably trying to get rid of the returned item before they put out any new ones) so we picked it up and went back home. Only to then find out that the parent units were all scratched up and had some sticky substance all over them and on top of that the 8 rechargeable batteries that are supposed to be included were 4 different kinds of batteries and half of them were not even rechargeable.
I am very disappointed and to be quite honest shocked that the manager I spoke to on the phone after I realized that I would have to spend another night worrying just flat out told me that «it is store policy not to open any returned items if the packaging looks like it has not been opened».
Well that might be fine for other stores but one that specializes in baby items should consider the small children that end up playing with the toys that might not be safe after somebody else broke and returned them.
The manager did tell me that I would get the monitor replaced with a brand new unit and 10% of my money back.
I don’t think that that makes up for endangering small children but in my case it is better than nothing.
If I have trouble getting what was promised to me, I will come back and change this review later (not that I could give any less stars).
After tonight I will buy my baby items and toys elsewhere.

help.
I’m at a Babies ‘R’ Us. I am devoid of babies.
However, my dear friend is due in a month, and I know she’s registered here.
First, wandering. Thoughts vacillate between bewilderment («What is that? It does WHAT? It goes WHERE???») to proto-​maternal («aww! wook at the widdle dinosaur jammies! widdle T-​Wex!»).
Time to get down to business. I go to print off the registry. Pre baby showers, I attended a lot of weddings (love + marriage then baby carriage, yo) so I’m old hat at this registry business. Flashbacks of previous registry shopping flash through my mind («Hi, I’m looking for the … uh… 6′ foot brocade table runner in Harvest Harmony… Out of stock… Well, …erm, the Mira Stemless wine glasses? Six? The ones for white wine?»). At least I know what white wine glasses look like. Safari-​print Boppy cover? Yeah… As Mama B. would say, I wouldn’t know it if it bit me. For all I know, it CAN bite me. *Shudder*
The registry prints… and, lo, it is the most-​organized registry I’ve ever seen! Aisles are divided into subsections. That Boppy cover? Subsection 18. All items the Mommy-​to-​be requested are easily located.
Well, well — that was easy. And… dare I say, fun? Thanks, Babies ‘R’ Us, for allowing those of us who are as-​of-​yet markedly un-​maternal to show up at a baby shower looking like pros.