The Baby and Toddler Show – Excel, London

So…..a long time ago I chose the pushchair which best suited our needs; The BabyJogger City Select.

After a false start, where I sourced a second hand one online, and decided to go for it, and changed my mind at the last minute, we have now purchased the Pushchair brand new.

Why didn’t we go second hand? Well, Maria confided in me that she was concerned that we have no way of knowing how old a second hand one was, and since it will be holding our babies for 3 years or more, she would prefer to get a new one.

At first I didn’t agree, but I soon came around to the idea, and now I am glad I did. And I can sell it on confident that I know how much wear it has undergone.

But don’t let that stop you from buying second hand. It’s only car seats where you should buy new, or second hand from a trusted friend or relative.

 

Getting it Cheap

So, step one for me was making the List.

 

I love lists.

This is a list of all the bits we need for the Travel System and all ancillaries and accessories – including car seats and bases.

Baby Jogger City Select	Quantity	Cost	Total
Pushchair	1	£449.99	£449.99
Second seat kit	1	£149.99	£149.99
Rain cover	2	£19.96	£39.92
Maxicosi adapters	2	£23.99	£47.98
Footmuffs	2	£34.99	£69.98
Belly bars	2	£19.99	£39.98
Parent Console	1	£25.00	£25.00
Child tray	2	£20.00	£40.00
		Sub Total	£822.84
Car Seats
Maxicosi cabriofix seats in black	2	£94.50	£189.00
Maxicosi easyfix base isofix	2	£89.95	£179.90
Maxicosi cabriofix footmuffs	2	£33.95	£67.90
Maxicosi cabriofix raincover	2	£10.95	£21.90
		Sub Total	£458.70
		Total	£1,281.54

It’s also important to note that no one place sold everything we needed, and certainly not at the best price for all; Since you can’t barter over the interwebz, this made online bargaining difficult.I then went online and found the very cheapest source for each individual item that I could to give me my guide price. This price excludes shipping.

So I now had an artificially low “cheapest online” price, totalling £1282 the lot. Artificially low, because no shipping was allowed and there were at least three separate vendors offering the cheapest prices.

We then went to the Baby and Toddler show in Excel London, and there, we got to have a go with the pushchair (which was not on display in any of the 10 or 15 baby shops we have visited), as well as looking at the carseats and bases. We also had a lot of fun.

This was the best bit. Not only did we get a full demo, I got to collapse it, and set it back up a few times. I was very impressed with the build quality compared to the wobbly old iCandy. Maria also got to wheel it around, and found it very manouverable. We were sold.

The next step was to ask all 4 (yes there were only 4, who sold the baby jogger) retailers for a special show price. I gave each of them the List (sans pricing) and they each came back with an all in one deal.

One of them was a catalogue store offering 20% off the catalogue price, but this didn’t work out particularly cheap, so they got binned (Babies R Us).

All 3 of the others gave me an equivalent or better price to my “cheapest online” total.

But.

One of them only sold some of the bits I wanted, but was throwing in 2 cots  (Peppermint), at the cheapest online price total. Confused? Yeah, don’t worry. Where they didn’t have a particular item I rolled up a total using the cheapest online prices to fill in the gaps, so I could compare.

One of them offered me everything £70 cheaper than online, delivered (Kiddisave)

One of them matched the online, delivered. (Don’t recall!)

 

So Naturally I asked Kiddisave, to throw in the two cots (worth £160) for £70(ish). The girl went to ask the manager and came back with a yes. I wonder how low I could have gone?

 

The Result

So all in all, I got everything on my list for £1300, with 2 cots which were not originally on the list, and free postage.

Some might say the upsold me, but they did have a point that newborns can only sit in a curving car seat for 2 hours before they need a change of position. This is when you will need to start using the cots instead.

So yes, we got it cheaper than online, and we got the opportunity to try the products before we bought them. However if you count the £20 tickets to get in, and the £52 in train tickets to get into London, plus the expensive lunch, and dinner before we went home, it was only a nose cheaper, really, but definitely a fun day out.

The show was a great opportunity to manhandle baby carriers, baby rucksacks, car seats etc. so I’d chalk the travelling costs up to general market research and leisure. So, in that respect, we saved a good £160 if you take online postage into account as well, compared to ordering over the tinterw3bz.

We had a great day, with some excited prospective grandparents have a whale of a time with us, and the added benefit of ComicCon going on in the next room, we were blessed with Spidermans and Batmans everywhere in the foyer!

So I look forward to receiving the goods, and putting a massive tick in a lot of outstanding boxes. I’ll post about the car seats separately, once they have arrived!