Lauren W. sent a message to David Brandon that said:
Dear Mr. Brandon
I am a frequent Toys R Us customer, and I am contacting you to report a serious concern regarding a special limited edition series of toys that are supposed to be available at Toys R Us stores all year.
I feel that I need to contact you directly about this because frankly I do not think your employees will know how to handle it, and it might never get to the right authorities within your company.
Starting in February of this year (2016), Nintendo began celebrating the Pokemon franchise\'s 20th anniversary, and special limited edition products are scheduled to be released to Toys R Us stores. A new plush toy of a special Pokemon character is supposed to be released in stores each month (note, these products are made by TOMY). However, there is a serious issue with these toys -- they are NOT being delivered to stores, and are never available to purchase from the Toys R Us website (always "sold out").
Oddly, there are hundreds of toy scalpers selling these Pokemon 20th Anniversary plush toys on sites such as eBay and Amazon for sickeningly inflated prices, going from $50-$100, while the original store price is $16.99. These scalpers are somehow buying these toys in mass quantities before the release date, and Toys R Us stores are unable to order them because of this.
I am a collector, and I have discussed this problem with a customer service representative in my local store; she told me that the toys cannot be ordered (sent to the store) because they are out of stock before they were even listed. I was even told by the Toy R Us employees that my "best bet is Amazon" if I want to get these products -- implying that they cannot and will not be able to order them for purchase in stores.
However, even though these toys are always apparently unavailable and sold out on TRU\'s website before the release date, I wonder if one or more of your employees might be involved in selling to scalpers through Toy R Us\'s eBay store.
I witnessed a very suspicious auction by Toys R Us on eBay, on March 30th. I had been trying to find the newly released April character of Pokemon 20th Anniversary plush toys (called "Jirachi"), and coincidentally, amidst all the scalper auctions, I found a newly listed eBay auction by Toys R Us selling this plush for its original price. The auction was listed precisely at 1:45 AM (EST), and the quantity was listed as "limited quantity available". Within the first few minutes, two buyers had immediately ordered 10 toys at once (clearly, these were scalpers). I quickly ordered one, assuming this was a miracle, as this toy had been impossible to order from TRU. My order seemed to go through, and I saw that the auction was quickly ended (within hours after listing) after 29 items were sold. At the same exact time, eToys, which I know is also owned by Toys R Us, held an identical auction for this toy and also ended it when the Toys R Us auction was closed due to the item once again being listed as "out of stock", even though no one bought one from that auction. At the writing of this email, it has not yet been re-listed.
My item has not been shipped to me yet, which concerns me. It also concerns me that scalpers were flooding to this auction to buy them in mass quantities, and that the auction was listed on TRU\'s eBay at odd hours of the night, and ended within four hours. How is it possible that Toys R Us can discreetly sell these on their eBay account (suspiciously, as I have mentioned), but do not have any available to ship to local stores, and none are ever available on TRU\'s official website.
On online forums (including TRU\'s website reviews, and on Amazon), I have read many, many comments by frustrated customers complaining about the mysterious lack of stock, and about the scalpers making it impossible for people to buy the Pokemon 20th Anniversary Plush toys.
(Note: in case you are interested, I took many screenshots of the mysterious eBay auctions, and the scalper auctions boasting images of all their stock.)
I sincerely hope that this problem can be resolved so Toys R Us stores can sell these special toys as they are intended, to make them available to your customers at affordable prices.
Sincerely,
Lauren
(Phone: 919 556 8871)
