Scholastic Bookclubs

I have always been a fan of Scholastic bookclubs for my students. Scholastic offers many different genres at exceptional prices. When the students buy books, I get points. I use my points to add more books to my personal library in the classroom.

Because Scholastic has been so generous to me throughout the years, I was a product tester, ate dinner at the W hotel in NYC with Jerry Spinelli, received many gift certificates, I decided to write them a letter. A couple of years ago I wrote a letter complimenting their Scholastic Bookclub phone operators. Everytime I call the operators are incredibly kind and accomodating. When I called to say they sent me a damaged book, the operator told me to keep the damaged one and they sent me a pristine copy (Said the Spider to the Fly).

This week however, I found the operators not so accomodating. Because I want to differentiate my next unit, I put in an order for books through my school. It was starting to get close to the time the unit was going to begin and I was nervous that I wouldn't get the books when I needed them. Because of this, I used over 1200 bonus points to order the books instead of waiting for the school to order them.

Wouldn't you know it, my school ordered books showed up a couple of days later. I called Scholastic and told them the situation. I was told: "Well, in order for you to get your points back, you will have to send your books back at your own expense."

What, what, what? My own expense? Scholastic has to be a billion dollar company! They can't pay for 15 paperback books to be shipped back to them? In the past they would have said, "Do not worry about it, keep those books and we will give you back your bonus points." OR "We will email you a postage paid attachment to put on the package to send it back."

Am I acting crazy? Is this too much to ask? I have been an avid, devoted Scholastic supporter for 6 years. My students order books from them about 9 months a year, for 6 years, and my orders are on average $100 or more.

May be I am expecting too much...what do you think?