My three children still have no books
...thanks to schoolbooks.ie
SOME of the thousands of parents who ordered schoolbooks through the online retailer schoolbooks.ie have yet to receive them even though their children have returned to school.
One furious mother ordered 72 books from Schoolbooks.ie over a month ago and is still waiting even though her three children start the new term this week and one son begins his secondary school life today.
‘ It’s unbelievable,’ distraught Deirdre Daly said yesterday. ‘You don’t get the same information every time you call them.
‘One man there told me there are 2,000 families in the same situation. That is not a comfort to me.’
The concerned mother said she first realised there was a problem with her children’s books on reading a story in the Irish Daily Mail.
A series of frantic phone calls to the company has left her confused and worried. Mrs Daly’s three children are starting school this week in Limerick. Today 12-year-old son Warren starts his first day in secondary school without any books.
And tomorrow her daughter Dorothy heads into fifth year, the start of her vital Leaving Cert cycle, without the textbooks she needs.
On Thursday, it looks like it will be the turn of eight-year-old Nathan to trundle into primary school with an empty satchel.
This is the first year Mrs Daly has used the online book company. She said it was the lure of a discount through supermarket vouchers which took her away from her local book shop. ‘I went because of the Supervalu rewards, you get a 10 per cent discount. That is a big differ- ence, my bill went down to €550.15 from over €600. And they come to your door, it was very attractive,’ she said.
But having called the firm numerous times, she found out her order, first made on July 22, hasn’t even been sent to the warehouse yet.
Now, in desperation, Mrs Daly has said she wants to cancel her order and buy the books from Eason.
However, she faces a new hurdle as one of the ‘quite young’ people answering the company phones said it would take at least four days to get a refund, leaving her children without books for another week.
‘I need to get that money back. I certainly don’t have the money to order them again,’ she said emotionally. ‘It is very stressful for me.’
Schoolbooks.ie confirmed on August 18 that a technical issue at its warehouse caused a backlog of 5,000 orders. Details of the delays emerged early last week after parents expressed concerns at the delays on social networking sites.
Thousands of parents complained they forked out up to €500 for books via the website but had been left in limbo for weeks as they could not make contact with the company.
Last night schoolbooks.ie confirmed that the backlog of 5,000 orders has been cleared and all orders have been dispatched for delivery.
But with the vast majority of secondary schools due to reopen this week, there are fears that other children will not have their textbooks in time.
In a statement last Thursday, John Cunningham, managing director of schoolbooks.ie, claimed the backlog in orders had been reduced from 5,000 to 1,300 on Thurs- day morning. In an update on its website yesterday, the company said: ‘Schoolbooks.ie is pleased to report that we have cleared our backlog of customer orders.
‘The remaining 1,400 orders from this backlog were sent to our couriers GLS between last Friday and Saturday for delivery today Monday, August 27, and tomorrow, Tuesday, August 28.
‘Anyone with an outstanding or- der in this backlog can go to our website and follow the link to the GLS online tracking to find out the delivery status of their order.’
But last night Fine Gael TD Mary Mitchell O’Connor, who raised the issue weeks ago, claimed the delay experienced by parents was ‘unacceptable’ at what is an already stressful and costly time of year.
Speaking last night, she said: ‘I called today and there was a message on the phone giving an undertaking that all books would be delivered on Monday and Tuesday. But I would call on them to put a human person on the phone to answer worried parents.’
The company, which was established in 2004, promises to deliver within five to seven working days.
Parents who became concerned by the booksellers’ failure to respond to their queries last week started a Facebook page called ‘Schoolbooks.ie – Maybe They Will Pay Attention To This?’ in a bid to get answers. Even yesterday, the page was filled with comments from frustrated parents who were still waiting on books.