I used to work for Target for a year & a half, and I understand all of your complaints about their Wedding Registry. Their registry printouts are nightmares! Its impossible to find items without an employee's scanning gun. So, I'd find customers going down every aisle looking for the right item, only to realize when they checkout that its the wrong size or brand, and hence, not on the registry. Then they'd ask for help, and I'd find out that somebody moved the items without updating the system so our scanning guns could say the right aisles!

The main reason I've seen products not available in the store is because the bride/groom chooses mostly online-only items, which are not available in stores. I've also found some brides/grooms scanning the clearance items to get a good deal, when the items being scanned are never coming back to the store again.

VERY IMPORTANT: There are different-sized Target stores. You have the Super Target with a full grocery store and 2 entrances, a mid-size Target with 2 entrances & the freezer food section (but not the grocery store), and then a regular Target with one entrance and no grocery store at all. If your bride/groom makes their registry/selects items at a Super Target, you are definitely not going to find everything if your local Target is a smaller-sized store.

So, all in all, the bride and groom might be *partially* at fault for items not being available when you are looking for them (especially if they are online-only), but Target could definitely change it to where its more obvious that it'd be harder for others to find items if the bride/groom chooses to do their registry online. My store (including the store manager himself) complained to corporate about this and nothing happened by the time I left the store.

In regards to the gift receipt, we had to print them out whenever someone had a registry at the checkouts (and asked when we didn't see them.) Target is extremely strict with their return policy, but people have abused it to the point where they had to have the rules. I've seen everything from people trying to return items from Wal-Mart (like their own brands), electronics with Best Buy store stickers on them, and empty (most likely stolen) CD jewel cases re-shrinkwrapped by the customer to get a 'refund' on it. Of course in all cases they didn't have a receipt. Although I agree that they should let you return things with a registry if its obvious that the item is on the registry, you have to understand that (as someone else said on here) that 'one bad apple ruins it for everyone.'