I don't know about you, but my yearbook cost a lot of money. Every year I struggle with the decision to buy one, but of course I always did. Having those memories is timeless!
For one school, though, this is a memory they don't want to have.
Jeromie Whalen, a technology teacher at Northampton High School, says popular yearbook contractor Jostens scammed them out of thousands of dollars.
Whalen claims that years of over-billing and mysterious fees only came to light this semester because he asked for an invoice, which Jostens was reluctant to share.
Jeromie took to Reddit (the post has since been deleted) to vent his frustrations about the situation. He says the whole ordeal with Jostens was infuriating.
"So I'm already at our wits end by the time the books arrive, and things get even better. I count the books and while we ordered 320, we received 375. Why do we have so many extras? JOSTENS SENT US THEM WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION, AND CHARGED US! They claimed it was for kids who forgot to order them so we could sell them, but if you look at the numbers of books it conveniently brought the small amount of profit we made to zero. They then want you to return the books by a certain date (usually in the summer) for a credit refund. JOSTENS ZEROS YOU OUT WITH EXTRA BOOKS AND HOPES YOU DON'T SEND THEM BACK.
You think that's the end? Oh boy, not even close.
So after months of being pushed around, I made it one of my absolute priorities to get these kids the most money I could back. I nit-picked every little detail, knowing full well that Jostens had no legal ground on things because no contract was signed and our students had paid a lot of money to this shady company. I argued about advertising, I contested them about the extra books, everything. In all, Jostens waived around $5000 in money owed. Think about that for a second. Jostened erased $5,000 at the wave of a wand. If you can magically erase $5,000 out of nowhere, what does that mean for the charge to begin with?"
It's pretty infuriating to think that a company would scam schools like this. Though they gave Jeromie's school the money back, what would have happened if someone wasn't as persistent as him?
Do you think he has a right to be upset about this?
If you would like to read Jeromie's entire post, you can do so here.
