I just wrote a really long reply on this subject but I decided we have to agree to disagree on this subject. It's not that we are just in in to make money. Our group has a huge budget (this year we will raise over $125,000) and believe me we know that the book fair isn't the greatest way to make money. We hold lots of other fundraisers, but the book fair is traditional at our school so we do it. The kids really look forward to it.

I was in business a long time and I just don't like the way Scholastic does business. I have had bad dealings with my sales rep, the warehouse, and the finance department (who left me a voicemail message two months after my fair saying I hadn't turned in my paperwork - and they had already cashed my check). It doesn't matter whether I am holding the book fair as a fundraiser or as a chance to get books in the kids hands. What does matter is that I am the customer and that I deserve good service from a company I am making a good profit for, especially since I give 1000% to the book fair (we have long hours, hold contests, have family events, decorate and every other thing they recommend). It all comes down to this - I'm working hard for them and they should be working hard for me.

Sorry to hear the rep wasnt much help for u all, I'm the master of going up the chain when I (we) feel inadequate service has been given (sometimes to my wifes schagrin(sp?))

Good luck in your endeaver to find what you need.
Wish I had more but, unfortunately, I dont.

mom2m&a:

Please do not be offended by my response to your post but: Why did you schedule a one day bookfair anyway? It seems like you had an awful lot going on as it was. Also, you probably did sign a contract with the book fair company and had some sort of obligation to go through with the contract. Perhaps instead of canceling it you could have rescheduled it. I know that I had a scheduling conflict (after I made sure the dates were ok with our principals) and rescheduled the fair. I think canceling something when you sign a contract is another story.

We have given needy students books out of the group's profit as well. But, to me, you are definitely in it for the money and should find another avenue to raise the needed cash you need.

AS for the survey forms, it is great that you filled them out. Scholastic reads every one that comes back. I have seen the data. It helps out in an "accross the board" way.

This year Scholastic had a great selection. I would agree that in the past years it did seem like there were not enough new titles to choose from. But those survey forms probably had that noted by many people and they took notice and rectified it. This year was great for selections.

The final straw was when she offered the buy one get one free book fair. I know a lot of you like this, but that means we do ALL the work for nothing.

It is true that there is no profit from that type of fair, it is to get kids more books for their money so you are not doing all the work for nothing . Again, this is clearly not for your group since that is not your aim.

I know it may sound like I work for Scholastic, but I do not. As I previously stated, I am on the National Customer Advisory Board and let me give you a little backround. I was experiencing lots of problems with the company for a while and was ready to pack it in with them too. I had a great customer service rep (now gone...) who went above and beyond for us. I kept giving them one more chance, one more chance... I did get some satisfaction. However, I was one SQUEAKY wheel to them. To tell you the truth: I was probably one of their biggest complainers. [ Now, I serve on their advisory board with 15 other book fair chairs from around the country. It has been a wonderful experience dealing with them and the company. I can tell you they are CONSTANTLY striving to make good changes for all. I have dealings with all the top people of the company in every department and they are very responsive. They listen to everything we have to say and have taken action on many of our suggestions.

Rome was not built in a day... this company is making changes but it does not happen over night. [img]smile.gif[/img] ....and one size does not fit all. Not everyone is going to be happy.

I have filled out every customer service survey from Scholastic and rated our sales rep poorly (but the field rep is great) and it hasn't made any difference. We live in a city with a Scholastic warehouse and now they have even stopped letting us go down and pick out our own replacement merchandise. The warehouse customer service is particularly poor.

We were scheduled to have a one-day book fair next week and ran into scheduling/volunteer shortage difficulties. I called the sales rep to cancel the fair and it was a truly awful experience. First she tried to tell me I could use the $200 sales incentives to pay someone to run the bookfair (BTW, this is absolutely against our bylaws AND my principles!!!!). Then when I told her the principal had asked us to cancel the fair (we're doing Open House, our annual Art Show and a Spaghetti Dinner that night) she told me she would call the principal directly. I told her that was not necessary since I was in charge and it was my call. The final straw was when she offered the buy one get one free book fair. I know a lot of you like this, but that means we do ALL the work for nothing. She tried to make me feel guilty "we've been planning on your fair and it's a real problem for me".

Many of the posts in this discussion mention thinking abou the reason you have a book fair. We do it because it does make money for the school and because the kids like to shop. If we lived in a rural area or we were a low-income school I think the book fair would be really important to the students and our school. But that's not our circumstances. We are a large suburban school with a Barnes and Noble less than a mile away. Our teachers send home Scholastic Book orders every week and most kids have tons of books. We do a used book sale at our Halloween Carnival each fall and we get so many donated books that we can't sell them all (and raise $1000).

Finally, before you think I'm crazy because I was insulted when the rep told me to offer someone the sales incentives so they would run the book fair, we use that money to make sure a needy student in each class gets a free book. Sometimes we dip into our profit to make sure that happens. I just wanted to explain that we are not just money hungry group but that in our circumstances we find it frustrating that there aren't many alternatives to Scholastic.

In response to Shawn - yes, we have tried the rep. The principle went above that as well. Being a rural school, we were always pleased with our turnout and our book sales. Seems like Scholastic wasn't. In the past few years, we have received fewer book choices and more junk. In fact, at our last book fair from Scholastic (2003/2004 school year) I personally bought nothing! Our entire family reads and we did not buy one book from the fair - the kids wanted a bunch of junk, which they did not get. Pretty sad. As I have never met our rep, I guess dropping out last year didn't mean all that much in the scheme of things for Scholastic!!

Like said before I put all of the
receipts into a jar and pulled names. I went onto the scholastic website and downloaded the pattern for t-shirts. We bought soem cheap tshirts for soem students and teachers and did a drawing the last day of the book fair. We also gave away $5.00 gift certificates to the winners of our coloring contest and our goldfish winners. Since we had a family event we were able to get an additional $100 to the $200 that scholastic already gives. We deduct the gift certificates for that. We also had the teachers fill out a wish list. Those that attended the teacher preview filled these out and left them. For those that did this we put into a drawing for 3 $20 gift certificates. We also printed up the fun sheets for the kids to do like word search and mazes. This was my first year organizing the book fair. Everyone said that this was the best book fair that we have had at the school in a number of years. The kids were excited and bought books like crazy. Yes we left out the pens but again you could only buy them if you were buying a book. I also passed out flyers every year for a month prior to the book fair. I sent out the book fair flyers and order forms too. We had a great response. I even dressed up as Clifford from a costume that Scholastic provided for me during our family event and I went to visit soem classrooms. The kids were very sad when I told them that the book fair was over. They said that they couldn't wait till we had another one in the fall. This time we might do more contests and prizes to get the kids excited about reading and their parents were happy to see us take more of an interest with their children.