A New Grinch in Town

by Janet White

I’m one of those people who have everything ready, wrapped, and shipped for Xmas by August. I love calling my sister, Nancy, at the end of each summer just to hear her reaction; she hates me!

However, this year I was starting to panic. It was September, and I didn’t have a thought in my head. I got busy, and it became my mission to get it done by the end of the month. By October 1, I was done... with one exception. My five-year-old granddaughter, Emerson, wanted Zhu Zhu pets. What in the world was a Zhu Zhu??

Boy was I in for a shock.

I watched a video on YouTube and saw these adorable hamsters running around their house, through tunnels, spinning a wheel and driving a car! They were great; I had to get them. They do everything real hamsters do, but you don’t have to feed them and clean their cages.

Since I do all my shopping on line, I went on walmart.com, but they were out of stock. I tried Target, Kmart, ToysRUs, and FAO Schwartz: all out of stock. Then I started hearing that this was the hot toy for Xmas and it was impossible to get them. It was only October ! I was not going to give up.

Then I found the little devils on Amazon. They were triple the going price. Shame on Amazon for being so greedy. The hamsters sell for $10.00 at Target, Kmart or ToysRUs, and Amazon had them for $30.00. Clicking my way around the website, I discovered a whole new category on Amazon called Third Party Sellers. There were so many hamsters for sale; it was like Ebay without the bidding. Their prices were all different ranges, and the cheapest I found was double the going rate. I really didn’t want to pay $20.00 for a hamster that I knew I could get for $10.00, so every day for three days I kept searching.

Then I saw an offer on Amazon that gave you $30.00 off any order if you opened an Amazon credit card. So I signed up for the credit card, ordered my Zhu Zhu pets and accessories and was thrilled to think I was getting $30.00 back after paying double what the things were worth.

My packages arrived all from different sellers; there was the fun house, the wheel, a slide, a bed, a carrier and two hamsters. I was thrilled to be through with my shopping, and I knew my granddaughter would be ecstatic.

By November, Zhu Zhu pets were the talk of the town! Every week the prices on Amazon and Ebay kept going up. The major retailers could not get them and didn’t think they ever would.

By December 1, one $10.00 hamster was on Amazon for $80.00!!! Most were around $40.00. I thought Amazon was such a great upstanding company. I was shocked to think that they would be making such a profit from these hot items. I was also feeling giddy that I had gotten all my pets and accessories for only double.

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Then the fateful day came. On the national news: Zhu Zhu Pets RECALL A consumer group said the pets had cancer-causing chemicals and were not safe.

I was sick. How could I give a cancer-causing hamster to my granddaughter? I sent Amazon an e-mail requesting information on returning my items.

Amazon said they had nothing to do with any of the transactions. They told me I had to contact each seller. Then why was their logo all over the web page? I was furious. I had no information on who sent me what. The shipping boxes were all gone, and my Zhu Zhu pets were already wrapped. I wanted to talk to a real person, so I called Amazon directly and got a woman in the Philippines who spoke so fast I couldn’t understand a word she said. I must confess I turned into the "ugly American" as fast as you can say Yankee Doodle! I surmised from her that all correspondence had to be between my sellers and me. Amazon would send me each of their e-mail addresses. I don’t type, and I don’t know how to send one e-mail to seven people. This whole task was daunting. Here it is December. I work for the post office; I’m working six days a week; it’s the busiest time of the year, and I am tired! This whole mess was making me prickly. I said to Miss Philippines, "You’re telling me I have to write seven people, find boxes and pack up seven different items and go to the post office in December and mail seven different packages!! Are you kidding me? I hung up on her and wrote Amazon the nastiest message I could conjure up. I ended by telling them they were the Grinch that stole my Christmas. In response to my tirade, all they sent me was the list of my sellers’ e-mail addresses. In my exhaustion, I wrote to each of the seven saying I wanted to return the item due to an impending recall. I heard back from one right away: "Sorry, we have a no return policy.” I waited to hear from the other six. Meanwhile, I contacted the manufacturer and got a response in five minutes. They defended their product, and said they had done extensive testing and the hamsters had passed every test. Meanwhile Zhu Zhu is in the news every night. It seems the possible recall came after a consumer group said the pets contained too high a level of antimony, a cancer-causing chemical. The controversy got so big because it involved the hottest toy since the Cabbage Patch craze.

Remember that Amazon credit card I got to save $30.00? Well I called them to see what recourse I had. "You have buyers’ protection on this card," I was told.

“Great,” I thought.

Then the credit card person read all the circumstances for this category: there was flood, fire, theft, breakage, terrorism, wind… everything EXCEPT a recall. They would be glad to put the purchases in dispute, but I had to return them first. I said, “What if I can’t return them?” “Then we can’t help you.” Once again, thanks for nothing.

I was so angry at this point that I decided to contact NBC Nightly News. This was a big story! The next night we were watching the national news and there was Brian Williams talking about the Zhu Zhu recall warning parents about high levels of antimony. My husband, Jeff, was convinced NBC had received my email and acted upon it!

Finally the government stepped in. The U.S. Consumer Advocacy group looked into the antimony level and said the consumer group did not test correctly and the toy was fine. NO RECALL!!! Whew. I also learned more about the consumer group that started all this. They are called “Good Group.” They are based in San Francisco and have panned almost every popular toy on the market including the new Disney Princess doll. Leave it to some nut balls in San Francisco to cause such hysteria [no offense Nancy and Loren]. I heard back from all my other sellers who did say I could return them and also offered links to sites that said

Zhu Zhu Pets were fine.

At this point I didn’t know whom to believe. Were the hamsters safe or would they kill my granddaughter? I kept watching the news and was ecstatic when I heard from the Consumer Protection Agency: “ The popular Zhu Zhu toy is not out of compliance with the antimony or other heavy metal limits of the new U.S. mandatory toy standard.” Yeah!It was now the week before Christmas. Work on my postal routes was killing me, but all I had to think of was Christmas morning and seeing Emerson’s face when she opened up Winky, and Pipsqueak and all their playthings, and it made me smile. One of my co-workers, who was also trying to get Zhu Zhu pets for her children, told me that Wal-Mart received the hamsters on December 23. They cost $10.00 and were being sold in the sporting goods department in a locked case. ONE per customer. I was so happy and proud of myself that I was here with my hamsters wrapped and under the tree, and not there at Wal-Mart hoping to get my one pet before they ran out again.

Christmas morning finally arrived. Emerson, and her sister, Olivia, opened presents at their house and then they were coming over to our house for breakfast. Emerson had already told her parents not to worry that Zhu Zhu pets were not in the stores. She was sure that Santa would bring her one, and Santa didn’t need stores.

So on Christmas morning, when there were no Zhu Zhu pets from Santa, Emerson was crestfallen. Then they got to our house, and the look on her face when she opened the first hamster was worth every last overpriced penny and every agitated minute I had spend over the past two months. “Where did you get this?” Emerson asked in disbelief. “Well, Emerson,” I began. “Gramma knew you really wanted a Zhu Zhu pet, but since I couldn’t find them anywhere, I wrote a letter to Santa. I told him what a wonderful and special grandchild you are and that if he had any Zhu Zhu pets for you, could he please send them to me, so i could make sure you got them.” Emerson beamed from ear to ear. “Yes, Emerson, there really is a Santa.”

Merry Christmas to All

Love, Janet

December 2009