Baby Bunting – East Bentleigh
669 Warrigal Road
East Bentleigh, VIC 3165
Tel: (03) 9575 4444
Fax: (03) 9563 7511

Baby Bunting is probably one of the best stores out there for all things baby. Surprisly, all things baby means all things expensive. How can smaller clothes, small plastic toys, and baby related bedding be so expensive. It’s simple, they play on parents emotions which is why I got sucked into buying an enormous amount from Baby Bunting. The shopping experience was pleasant, however there are a few things I find very annoying.

The service
We have been to several baby stores in and around SE Melbourne, and found Baby Bunting (Bentleigh) to have all the products under the one roof. They also have a 3 month layby service which is useful if you are buying plenty of items and racking up the bill. We took pretty much a whole day to do our shopping, which demanded a personalised shopping assistant. Baby Bunting is one of the few stores that offers this service. A customer service lady accompanied us the whole day explaining each and every product, and dissecting out our questions. It seems she knew most things, however did slip up on a few occasions. We didn’t expect her to know everything, but overall the service was admirable.

It started to get a bit annoying when I sensed she was starting to feed on our paranoia and baby ignorance by recommending products we didn’t need, such as the specific nappy disposal unit. Sure it might be useful, but certainly not a necessity by any means. I caught onto this and stayed stern towards the end of the day. We did blow our budget significantly, but hey – its for the baby, so it’s worth it.

The price
Don’t expect Baby Bunting to be the cheapest place out there because it is NOT. We found prices for most products were competitively priced, however there are price exaggerations around. We found cheaper play toys, gyms, clothes, bedding, and cots at other places such as: Babies R Us, Baby Co, Babies Galore however because Baby Bunting sold all things under the 1 roof we stuck with our choice and paid that little bit extra. Also the 3 month laybe helped us in terms of meeting our costs in time.

The annoying things I mentioned earlier…

* Admirable that they have a 3 month interest free laybe system, however you can only take the products you have paid for. They really should have a 12 or 24 month interest free terms for purchase prices above a certain range similar to electronics stores. This allows for people to budget for the products, and also buy a lot more at once which will benefit Baby Bunting anyway.

* Each time you pay for your layby you are given a receipt with outstanding amounts due, but not given a receipt for items you have taken home. This puts the onus on the buyer to keep track of what they have taken home, and what is still left at the store. When you buy a few items, this task is easy but when you buy several items (like in our situation) it became a bit of a nightmare. It is is really annoying for the customer. Perhaps an online, or even an email system will help customer’s keep track relatively easily.

* The delivery service is subcontracted out to King’s who further subcontracts to an private individual who delivers using a van. The buyer must help during the delivery process. Now, they deliver mostly on weekdays, and customers are usually working with their pregnant wives at work or at home (so they can’t help, i.e.: they’re pregnant, they are buying baby products – hint hint!!). It’s really annoying how they charge for the delivery but yet ask for the customer’s physical help to unload the van. This is my view is very poor practice!!

* The phone number for the East Bentleigh store rings out after only a few rings, and often cuts out with an “unreachable” message. This is super annoying when you ring after 10am which is their busiest or even on weekends. Their phone system needs an upgrade.

The delivery
Despite clearly booking the delivery on a certain date, it was delivered to our home almost 2 weeks early. The guy rang me to ask me where I was, and I told him I wasn’t expecting the delivery today. This was a bit annoying because he asked if he could leave it outside the house. WHAT? I was a few hundred km away, so was in no way prepared to have expensive items left outside the house (in the rain too!). Silly question from his part!

The botched bassinet
It turned out the bassinnet which I assembled and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why it was slanted, did in fact have a manufacturing defect. I promptly returned it for a brand new bassinnet (these aren’t easy to assemble either).

Summary - 7 / 10 (service as impressive, but annoyances are a major downside to the experience!)
I would recommend Baby Bunting you want those small products, or want to buy everything in 1 shop. I would certainly recommend if you want variety because Baby Bunting has it all, but don’t go there if you want a bargain because you WILL be disappointed.