Well, why not screw with their heads in kind? Set your due date out by 15 months or so, of course if the program will let you. You can have the longest pregnancy in their database. Hehehehe…..

It all boils down to the bottom line, as usual.

Thank you for your comment. I do understand that the registry system was undoubtedly set up in this manner out of simplicity and not outright lack of concern about adoptive parents to be. Most likely the designers never even considered adoptive parents in any appreciable manner in their baby registry thought processes.

I understand that the CSR cannot effect change. My hope is that if enough people in my situation complain, Amazon’s higher ups will deign to take notice and make a simple change to their systems. Pie in the sky dreaming, I know. But I can hope.

The problem is that Amazon sells their checkout/store as web services to brick and mortar companies that want a profitable web presence. Since the software is a product in it’s own right, Amazon uses things speed and simplicity to market it to other companies. The adoption exception may have been part of the original design at some point, but could have been cut to increase performance. This also means is that there are a lot of other stores that practice the same discrimination, if unintentionally. Chances are, they don’t have a choice. The value in Amazon’s web services is that they’re “turn-key.”

Of course, calling them is a waste of your time. A CSR on the phone has no authority or instructions to do anything other than apologize.

I appreciate your reply here, but there is a point I am trying to make that I’m not sure you completely recognize. One of the hardest things for an adoptive parent-to-be is the not knowing when you’ll match or if you will match with expectant parents who wish to place their child for adoption. I do understand that I can make up a date and change it at will. However, the date is the problem.

Putting in a date causes anxiety about whether we will match before that date. What if we have to wait over 18 months, 2 years? The problem is in having to enter a date at all.

What I am asking is whether there is a means of making the date field optional, period. BabiesRUs has added an “are you adopting” field to their registry. Go the next step and add an “are you adopting” field and then not require a date for those who are adopting. Would that be all that complicated? Considering the fact that you can track my purchases, make recommendations based on my previous orders, and stock everything from groceries to hardware, would making such a change really be that hard?

Although the ‘due date’ terminology doesnt really cater to adoption, you can enter any date you please for that column. Once entered, and information can be changed anytime you want, just like any other customer information on Amazon. This way, you should be able to change your date at any time, to any date.

I tried creating a fictious account to test this, and it worked.

I’ll try to forward this to the people at CustomerService to see that this doesnt happen again.

I do know from experience that at least Babies-R-Us and Target’s registries require a due date. In the case of Babies-R-Us, I talked with one of the store personnel while registering and told her we were adopting. She was very helpful, and suggested we go ahead and select a due date 9 months away; if we weren’t placed by then, she assured us it was easy to change. It was. I was a little upset at the time about *having* to change the date, but it was easy enough to do. I wish I could talk about Target, but I seem to have blanked that experience out.