Brenda Power

My parcel from schoolbooks.ie finally arrived ...too late. But why on earth wouldn’t they speak to me?

MY doorbell rang just after 9am yesterday. There, standing in the lashing rain, was a smiling delivery man holding out a carefully sealed box of school books, and a little plastic stylus for me to sign his electronic receipt pad. But I had to turn him away.

Even a month ago, I’d have signed willingly. A month ago, more than a fortnight had already passed since I’d sent my order for 23 text books, and paid more than €300 by credit card, to Schoolbooks.ie. And so by the end of July, I was already beginning to wonder about the delay in a service that I’d found so reliable until then.

If you don’t have kids at school, then you can’t really appreciate the damper that the whole schoolbooks routine puts on your summertime spirits. In the last week of term, the children come home with their list of required texts for September.

And each year, I dutifully haul out the enormous box of old schoolbooks that lives under our stairs. There’s at least five stone of books by now, dating back 15 years, many in near-perfect nick. I sort through the mountain to see if I can find any match with the new term’s requirements. But because of the singularly baffling wastefulness of the Irish schoolbook system, I’ll be lucky if there’s even one that I can strike off my list. ONCE I have been through that reliably fruitless little exercise, the next step is to buy the books we need. Until I discovered Schoolbooks.ie a few years ago, this meant dropping your list into a local bookstore and then standing in line, perhaps a week later, to collect them.

Your bag of books was unearthed among the pile at the back of the shop and slammed onto the counter by a harassed assistant. The books were taken out, checked, ticked off the list one by one, rung up on the till, and replaced in the bag while you gasped over the bill.

Invariably, at least one of the books wouldn’t be available. It would be out of stock... or print. Or they weren’t sure whether it was the text book or the workbook you needed, and you sure as hell wouldn’t know, and so they’d have to put a big red circle around that and home you’d go, with the prospect of another trip, another queue, another outlay, still ahead. Bliss.

And so the online option seemed a charm. Instead of standing in a queue of tetchy mums (always mums, by the way) you sat at home with your list, your cuppa and your credit card, ticked the books off one by one, and waited for the smiling delivery man to turn up at your door, within the week, with his box of books and his little electronic thingy for you to sign.

And then, as the end of August approached, you could gloat as the other parents stood in line to discover that the maths text was sold out, sorry, and wouldn’t be back in till October at the very earliest. Meanwhile, your books were covered, labelled and packed i nto shiny new schoolbags, all ready for the first day back. And whatever else the children found to grumble and fret about, as the new term approached, there was just the smallest chance it might not actually be your fault.

This year, I ordered my books on July 11, the second week of the school holidays and with ages to go before small people developed an enthusiasm for organising their new Moshi Monster/Spiderman schoolbags. A week went by, then two, with no word as to when they’d be delivered. The €300 showed up on my next credit card statement, but still no books. A general email expressed regret, and promised the books by August 10. When they hadn’t arrived by then, I emailed to say I wanted them by the 15th, as I’d be away for the last week of the holidays and needed books sorted by then. Still no reply.

I emailed again to say I’d have to cancel if they weren’t delivered soon. No response from Schoolbooks.ie. I tried ringing the numbers on the email – both lines sounded disconnected. I sent a final email to say I wouldn’t deal with Schoolbooks. ie again, and rang my bank.

Join the queue, they said, loads of parents had been on cancelling their payments to Schoolbooks.ie, and hadn’t I heard all the fuss on Liveline?

And so, with days to go before the start of term, I found myself in a bookshop queue, clutching my list and waiting for an overworked, but endlessly patient, assistant to gather all 23 books, check them, total them and bag them for me. On the plus side, the bill came to almost €50 less than I’d been perfectly happy to pay Schoolbooks.ie for the sheer comfort of convenience. Then yesterday, 24 hours before start of term, the smiling delivery man turned up on my doorstep with a box and a receipt to be signed. And I told him to take them away again.

All because Schoolbooks.ie couldn’t be bothered to reply to emails, or keep customers informed, because they were so cavalier about the business they’d been trusted with, and so slipshod with the service they’d undertaken to perform, they’ve lost €300 worth of custom from me this year, and multiples of that over the years to come. I’M sure they don’t care, they certainly acted as if my money didn’t matter a whit, and if they can afford to be so off-hand with regular customers, then I do hope it stays fine for them. But I’d be dubious about the outlook, all the same.

Because online businesses need to maintain one valuable overhead – trust. And the currency is honesty. If Schoolbooks. ie hadn’t misled us with false promises, and ignored enquiries, and switched off the phones, and refused to address its customers through the media (they only spoke to one newspaper) they’d have come out of this debacle relatively unscathed. Never mind the warehouse, if they had just hired extra staff to handle the phones and the email, they’d be fine.

I could have lived with getting our schoolbooks yesterday, if I’d been guaranteed they’d arrive – if, say, they’d promised delivery by the end of August or your books for free.

But next year, even if they offer the books for nothing, I still don’t think I’d risk it.