Anyone that has a baby can understand the frustration and confusion that goes along with purchasing a car seat. Unfortunately Josh and I got to experience this first hand this past weekend when we purchased 2 new car seats for Owen and Carter. They have just about reached the maximum height and weight limit for their infant seats so we knew time was running out.
After doing some research on Consumer Reports and reading customer reviews on multiple websites we decided to purchase the Radian 65 car seat from Sunshine Kids. Along with a great safety rating and good reviews we were ecstatic at the idea of being able to fit 3 car seats across the back seat of our Toyota Rav 4. This meant that should we decide to have another baby one day, we wouldn't have to purchase the dreaded soccer-mom minivan! This excitement was short lived.
Josh quickly assembled the new car seats with ease, it was almost too good to be true. We had Owen be our guinea pig to adjust the height of the chest harness. We had to do the same for Carter once we learned that even though they are identical twins, their bodies are quite different. Out came the old car seats and in went the new with a little bit of brute force and perhaps a few explicatives. These things are never easy to install!
We had just gotten the boys dressed and ready to go to my dad's for dinner when we loaded them in the car and realized we had a very big problem....we couldn't tighten the chest harness! Since the boys are less than a year old they must continue to ride in the rear facing position. The strap for the harness was buried against the back seat of the car making it impossible to properly secure them in their seats. We thought we had done something wrong during the set-up or installation so Josh removed one of the seats. After reading and re-reading the instruction manual we learned that not only had we done everything correctly, but that we had purchased probably the worst car seat ever! To add insult to injury it was obvious that we were indeed going to be purchasing a minivan should we decide to have any more children. What's that saying again? "If something seems too good to be true, it probably is".
By this point Owen & Carter were crying and I must say I wasn't far behind. We were already 30 minutes late for dinner but had no idea how to make the seats work. After re-installing the seat for a second time Josh came up with a plan. We tightened the harnesses to the point where they were snug and safe for the boys before putting them in their seats and then just fastened the clip. It worked just fine but we knew that this was just a temporary fix.
We knew we had 3 weeks to return the car seats as instructed by the salespeople, provided we had the original receipt and packaging. After finding the shriveled, illegible receipt in he clothes dryer we headed back to the store to return the seats. Thankfully the nice saleswoman didn't give us any trouble after hearing our dilemma.
After more research and looking around we have since purchased 2 new car seats and can only hope that we have better luck the second time around.
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Yikes---doesn't sound very fun!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad it all worked out eventually. Poor things (x4).
I think the idea behind this (and all car seats) is that once you get it adjusted to fit the child, you shouldn't loosen the straps each time you take them out, to ensure they are properly placed in the car seat every time. Nice in theory, but a pain in the arse to wrestle them in and out of the straps each time! What did you decide to get instead?
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know as well, what kind of car seats did you get instead?
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