Target Stores: Car Seat Trade-In Event: Recycle For New Car Seat, Stroller & Get EXPIRED

Quote from Pat_uhd459 : Will a car seat and a car seat base be considered 2 trade ins? I have a car seat and 2 car seat bases.

Yes. A base alone is considered 1 item

Quote from RWChiefs : yeah, i think it's 10 years or something. But it should be printed somewhere on the seat

I heard it was 5 years. It's especially true if you park outside and the sun bakes the plastic

Quote from NavyHamster270 : You must be one of those people that think canned food expires the day it says it does (if at all). Expiration dates are planned obsolescence at best on 98% of shit. Yet another thing created to help consumers but then twisted into a way to profit (while simultaneously creating mountains of trash that is perfectly good stuff). It's truly beyond depressing and soul crushing.

As a manufacturer of an ingestable product, I'll tell you what my "best by" date entails. We send our product our for testing to see if it has the same nutrition as is listed on the label. Every month, they pull another product from the batch and do the testing. They do this for 3-5 years or how ever long you pay them. Some nutrition in your product will break down to a point that your product no longer contains the promised nutrition on the label. At that point is my "best by" date. This is just specific to my product and different products will have different testing.

So, "best by" dates means they can't guarantee the nutrition on the label or it has a higher likelihood from growing stuff.

In this case, it may be be due to the temperature fluctuations in your typical car that deteriorates the plastics and causes it to loose its structural integrity. But of course YMMV

How to go with the process..do we have any link to register.

(Even though there's no hope ) COME ON WALMART! That promo was great:
1) find ratty shitty old nasty carseat at the dump or one that's left outside goodwill for weeks
2) take hazmat situation into WM and get $30
3) repeat

I actually brought in 2 decent carseats, but man SO much open for abuse there..... no way they actually recycled all those nasty festering carseats. Probably had to call EPA for disposal.

Quote from S_Klass : Yes. Seats usually expire between 6 - 10 years from their manufacture date. They say this limited useful life is due to the reduced safety resulting from breakdown in materials/wear and tear etc.

Carseats are made out of the same stuff my car is made out of: plastic, metal, nylon belts, fabric, etc. Guess I better throw away my expired 2013 Camry this year before I endanger the lives of my family members.

Quote from tre4s13 : Do car seats have expiration dates?

Quote from Karau614 : Ymmv but when our local Targets do this , they just have a pallet sized box sitting by the entrances. The box has a QR code on it for the coupon. Therefore you don't actually have to trade anything in. Anyone can walk by and scan the code to load the coupon.

(In industry parlance that huge box is known as a gaylord, FWIW)

Quote from NavyHamster270 : You must be one of those people that think canned food expires the day it says it does (if at all). Expiration dates are planned obsolescence at best on 98% of shit. Yet another thing created to help consumers but then twisted into a way to profit (while simultaneously creating mountains of trash that is perfectly good stuff). It's truly beyond depressing and soul crushing.

The "expiration" of carseats is just a HUGE abundance of caution. Just like how we're told never to buy or accept a used seat because "it might have been in an accident or mistreated".

If you do some googling you'll find all sorts of excuses as to why seats "expire" such as new safety standards (then why aren't older cars "expired"?), worn metal parts (really? I have 4 kids and I've never used a seat enough that it's genuinely worn, maybe these authors have prolific metal chewers on their hands), etc. One article I found even went so far as to compare a carseat to lawn furniture - as if the two have same environmental exposures at all, not to mention they are different plastics altogether.

The physical structure of most seats is HDPE, same type of resin as milk jugs and the like, also same type of resin that is buried underground carrying natural gas for decades, or protecting subsea cabling FWIW. UV is probably the biggest culprit in degradation; low temps make it a bit more brittle. Ironically also the same resin that, once recycled, often finds its way into stuff like plastic lumber (does your deck or bench fall apart in 10 years?).

But for the price, cost/benefit and peace of mind is your own decision. Personally, through our 4 kids, we actually used much older seats as backups or for relatives (e.g. grandparents).

A lot of people commenting on the expiration dates of carseats, but in my research I wasn't able to find one documented case of a car seat failing due to being expired. Like others have said you're probably going to want to change them out before expiration because they get dirty, but there is little evidence they become less safe over time.

Quote from crazyinjun : Trading in two car seats? You can redeem this offer twice.

You can redeem twice but can you stack the coupons to save >20% on a single item?

"And the data from the crash test basically came to the conclusion that the seatbelt had done pretty close to, if not as good a job, as the car seat. And in fact, if you had just submitted the data from the crash where the crash-test dummy was in a seatbelt alone, that would have easily passed the requirements for it to be to have been a car seat, even though it was actually just a seatbelt." (for children 2 to 6). _________________ Freakanomics podcast - How Much Do We Really Care About Children? (Ep. 447)
January 13, 2021

Quote from tre4s13 : Do car seats have expiration dates?

Yes, they do

You guys seem to have some exp with Target. I don't see "booster seat" specifically listed and we have a perfectly working 3rd seat (sold my leisure car) and I think our 4yr old is going to need a Booster seat in 3-4 months. Does it apply to a booster seat?

I realized my wife forgot to give away 1 of 2 baby carrier car base. Does that count towards a 20% coupon as well? We'll end up needing 2 booster seats eventually.

Thank you.

Quote from tfreeman451 : When: Monday, April 5, 2021 through Saturday, April 17, 2021 https://corporate.target.com/corp...t-trade-in

Quote from un_plug : Like Target, the intent of the trade-in was to use toward the purchase of an upgraded car seat of other needed baby items, and a limit of 2 per household. n, and Walmart corporate officially pulled the plug 9 days earlier than the announced run.

So during this event, does Target jack up the price of their car seats 20% or do they stay at the same price as before the event? That's typically a retail game that retailers play when things go on "sale".

Quote from kida182001 : So during this event, does Target jack up the price of their car seats 20% or do they stay at the same price as before the event? That's typically a retail game that retailers play when things go on "sale".

This ain't Kohl's

Quote from tre4s13 : Do car seats have expiration dates?

Yeah, that's why they have these events