Part of the delight of Christmas morning is opening up fresh, shiny, untouched gifts. Our new stuff gets wrapped in colorful paper outside of the boxes and layers of protective plastic by the Asian teenagers who made them for us. Jan’s great-grandson is still a baby, so he probably didn’t care one way or the other about the condition of his gifts, but the grown-up family members did. The high chair they bought him had been used. Used a lot. And it was covered with food and mold. It should be their baby who has the privilege of throwing spaghetti on his high chair, not someone else’s.

If something like this happens to you, consult the advice in our classic post, “What To Do When A Store Sells You Box Of Crap And Won’t Take It Back.”

We went to Walmart just before Christmas to purchase a new high chair for my great grandson. We picked up what we thought was a nice [Graco] high chair that converted into a booster seat. Item number 004740611732, from store number [redacted]. Heading home we wrapped it up and waited for Christmas Day. That was a mistake we should have opened the box before we left WalMart, or better yet, never went to Walmart at all.

What we found on Christmas Day, well what the new mother found was not only NOT the high chair we thought we bought, but a USED highchair. A really really disgusting moldy dirty high chair. So disgusting I actually took pictures because I did not think any one would believe me.

I went back to the store today and took the high chair to Customer Service. I walked in and let the employees know that I wanted three things, first my money back, second an apology and finally an investigation to find out WHO had allowed this to happen. The staff called the floor manager to take a look at the high chair, which was easy since by that point I had pulled out almost half of the high chair and dumped it on the counter! The manager did apologize and let us know that the chair would not be put back into the store (some thing I was concerned about) but would be trashed!

We are now on the hunt for a new high chair, but opening that high chair really ruined Christmas for me, and my family. Now instead of this being remembered as my great grandson’s first Christmas it is going to be remembered as the day I got gypped by Walmart! And the next high chair will be purchased anywhere but at Walmart!!

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