Rant for today

The topic of today's rant is: Canadian Tire. Or more specifically, Canadian Tire gift registries.

Why oh why do you forsake me CTC? Why do you tempt me with your wares only to disappoint me with how poorly set up your registry system is? The team of monkeys you have working on this needs to be fired.

Mike and I are in the process of figuring out where we want to register. In doing so we have selected several stores and are trying to do a mock-up registry so we can figure out which place works best for us. Since we don't really need anything yet are being (dare I say bullied?) pressured into creating a registry, this has been difficult. Trying to pick out gifts when you don't want or need anything is a lot harder than you'd think. And on top of that, anything that we do get will have to be dealt with accordingly since we have no space to put anything new in our apt or storage locker. That is a different rant for a different day.

About a week and a half ago we set off to Canadian Tire to try adding items to our list. It turns out that the registry system at our preferred CTC location is down. "It should be up in a few days. Try again later."

Yesterday we went back to the same CTC location and guess what? The registry system is still down. The nice but vapid cashier girl told us that the other two closest locations have their registry system working so we can try to add stuff there instead. We head off to the Heartland Town Centre CTC. Oh and guess what? It's also down. If this is how they're going to be, how are guests supposed to purchase anything from the registry? I've also heard nightmare stories from several other brides about how CTC doesn't ship/store items bought from the registry with the gift-giver's name. So if they didn't fill out a gift receipt card or picked up the item themselves to bring to the wedding, you don't know who it came from. To make things even worse (and more stupid) if you call to ask them to look up who purchase the item, they CTC can't tell you due to their privacy policy. Gah. It's a gift registry! What's the point if you don't know who the gift came from?

Because we're giant suckers, we will probably give it another try at yet another CTC location. But... I am starting to think this will probably be crossed off our list of potential registry places pretty soon.

Also contenders (read: look at how unimaginative we are):
- Sears
- The Bay/Home Outfitters
- Linens N Things
- Home Depot (if things go well later this month)

This has been the most stressful part of the entire wedding planning process. Only slightly more stressful than putting together a suitable guest list. It is just not right that I am having wedding registry nightmares. Not right at all.

PS. As a follow-up to my last rant, I can't remember if I mentioned this, but when I got to the City of Markham Clerk's desk, it turns out that 3 months means 3 months and not 90 days after all! She dated our marriage license exactly 3 months later for expiry. Bleh.