5/17/11: Rewards r Us or False Promises r Us?

As a blogger generally I am sharing wonderful products, services or places to take your family.  Today I would like to tell you where not to go.  I have had my Toys r Us Rewards card since 2008, and I have yet to receive any "Rewards" I can use.  The worst was what happened this past Christmas.  There was a special "biggest rewards ever" where they gave you 10% back.  Of course I bought many toys there with a 3 and 5 year old, so my rewards were stacking up. 

 I waited after Christmas and never received anything in the mail or email about my Rewards.  Finally I logged in to my account (which I don't generally do).  I saw that I had $40 in Rewards that were expired!  How could this be?  I was never notified. 

 I called right away and they explained they sent me an email.  I checked all my emails and never received anything.  I also checked the account listed online and it was my email.  What I found out today is that a lot of these emails got routed to Junk by many people's email servers.  Even a Manager at a Toys R Us just told me his was routed to Junk, but he knew to look for it.  Long story short after a discussion with their 1-800 number and going in and talking to a manager, nothing changed.  I then searched online and found a Facebook Page dedicated to this scam, and several posts online about my same complaint.

My husband also was given a "gift card" around Christmas for buying Wii games.  It was $40.  We went to use it yesterday and realized it had expired one month after it was given to him.  Because it was a gift card, he never thought it would expire that quickly.  All the associate said to him is that it wouldn't activate for 6 hours, nothing about the expiration.  Another thing TRU says they can do nothing about.

I will be shopping at Amazon, Target and other Toy retailers going forward.  The Manager I spoke to today said there was nothing that could be done about the gift card as it was a pomotion, and my Rewards points were expired too long.  He offered me 10% off my last purchase of $40 which is laughable.  $4 does not compare to $80 I lost.  Some people mentioned calling the Better Business Bureau.  That will be my next step.