Car Seat Fiasco

I went to Argos yesterday to buy car seats for the boys. Argos is a catalog store -- you take a HUGE catalog home and write down the numbers of the things you want to buy. You go into the store and type in the number to check their stock, pay for your item(s), and then pick it up in a few minutes at their counter. It makes for very easy shopping...usually.

We were looking to buy booster seats for the boys, as we didn't bring our car seats with us to England (since we weren't planning to have a car), for our trip up to Edinburgh in a rental car to pick up my mom for a visit. Apparently there is a new car seat law that goes into effect today and everyone else in Durham decided that they all needed to have these booster seats as well. There were 2 versions that Argos even advertised in their weekly sales ad that were completely out of stock at all Argos stores and even their warehouse.

I then took a trip to Tesco to see if they might have one. They were completely out. I discovered this at the same time a man came around the corner with a salesperson asking if there was any way to find out if there were any in the back. He and I then went to Customer Service to be told that they had "loads" last week and their computer still registered that there were 20 in stock -- even though there were none to be found on the shelves or in the back room. Then we were told that unfortunately they couldn't tell us a delivery date for more of them because the computer won't show a delivery date if there are still items "in stock". Whatever!

The first thing that came to mind is that if there was a law coming out in the US that required something to be compulsory -- Walmart and Target would have a ton of them in stock and coming in as soon as they could if they happened to sell out.

Fortunately, we have already made great connections here. We received a car seat for Silas to borrow from one set of friends and have been told that we can borrow a booster for Elam from a friend at school. Thank you Jesus!