Review on Fun and Reliable Playco Products Walkie Talkies for Kids - Stay Connected and Have a Blast! by Kenneth Wood

In preparation for a large group hike I wanted to take the necessary precautions to keep my children safe, particularly the 30's 4 seater year old girl , which is known for running away from its own plans. Looking through the many options available here and elsewhere, these turned out to be the best for my needs. All the features I wanted, please take it a step further: * Easy to use * Multiple buttons * High quality sound * Wrist strap (it's amazing how many baby walkie talkies only have belt clips, among most little ones that I know are useless )* Compatible with other walkie-talkies Wow! Not so fast there, compatibility. Yes, it's a killer for me. No matter what I tried I couldn't get these things to work with other walkie talkies on channels 1, 2 or 3 despite matching frequencies. This involved using various brands and models (we have a Motorola T600, but I also tried five other walkie-talkies borrowed from our group of 40+ people) with fresh batteries and disabled all privacy channels/digital encryption keys. Nada. Actually not really. Channels 2 and 3 were nada. Channel 1 (462.5625) is used by other radios to receive messages from Playco, but not vice versa. For some reason this annoyed me more than if they didn't work at all because it seems like they should. Since they didn't meet my expectations (based on the Q&A I checked before ordering) I would normally give up to 2 stars. However, since the sound quality and ease of use between the two Playco devices is better than I expected, I'm giving it one star again. However, since in reality they didn't meet my most important need for communication with other devices, I probably would have sent them back if the aforementioned 4 year old hadn't broken one of the belt clips (note: I looked like as soon as this happened and they didn't particularly pulled hard, so be careful if your child is rude with such things). I really wanted to love her. Unfortunately, the lack of a utility prevented this from happening. ********** UPDATE 9/25/19 ********** I'm upgrading from 3 stars to 4 stars based on seller responsiveness. While I'm still frustrated that walkie-talkies don't work well with other brands, customer service and doing the right thing goes a long way. The seller dealt with my issues in an honest and balanced manner, and then took another step offline (without asking or prompting me) to try to fix everything. They have never asked me to change my rating or receive anything in return; they just wanted to make me happy. Mission accomplished. I will definitely buy future products from them just knowing that they care more about good business practices than trying to inflate reviews. Recent reviews: Product - still 3 stars (meets my expectations) Seller - 5 stars Overall score = 4 stars