We have used SF for the past 2 years. Not too many problems - at least no more than any other vendor. I think, with any of these companies, it is all in your rep. There is room for negotiation with all. Get references in the beginning of others who have worked with this rep. Talk to them. We also set up tentative agreements on order arrival dates & set up terms of payment such as 50% at delivery, 50% net 10 or something like that. So they knew they had to get it right if they wanted the rest of their money! Sorry for all of your problems. Hope you find someone better to work with next year. These type of sales are too easy money not to do!

I had heard SF was not reliable.

If you cancel, you may have penalty charges.

but... if you DO cancel and refund everyone their money, guess what? SF will be stuck with all that merchandise and be out of money!

you win after all!

just write a newsletter explaining the situation, thank the parents for their patience and that you will have to come up with another fundraiser in the spring otherwise programs will be affected.

good luck,

d

mykidsmom,
I hate to tell you this, but at least it will be a heads up for you: now that parents have your home number and you were in charge of one fundraiser, you'll continue to receive phone calls for a while. 2 years later, I still occasionally receive a phone call during fundraiser time from parents asking questions. The first time this happened I was totally confused, so at least you'll know in advance to expect this.

Let me tell you as a former president, we really appreciate you dealing with this and answering those endless phone calls. We had a fundraiser chairperson who gave out her number, but then when problems arose, she never answered her phone and never returned phone calls. She finally changed her answering machine message to tell people to call the school if they had a problem with the fundraiser. The poor secretary at school was then overwhelmed since she didn't know anything about this and people are much nicer to a parent volunteer than they are to a school employee.

I am on the cusp of three0four solid months of fundraisers and wile the E-books and Sally Foster have not been a walk in the park I have had better luck and communication with their reps than the discount cards rep.

Looking at my caller id, I have spoken with someone from Sally Foster everyday for the last three weeks to make sure all was well. I'm not going to paint a rosey picture here as I have had more drama than Days of Our Lives, but not all of it was Sally's fault. (A mom lost her order form and is demanding one from me...I have nothing!) Now my rep has been honest with me and told me items were going to be late and helped me when the warehouse was shipping today and school was out Friday by driving 100 miles to the warehouse to pick-up our orders and personnaly deliver everything to the school AND the classrooms.

Now the cookie dough thing has me nervous because we were signed to do that but changed it to another company. That's Febuary.

My3stongtikes, at least your rep didn't go to Vegas like mine did! That's great about her birthday and all and she did have another gal lined up (whom did better job!) but OHGh!! Couldn't this have waited??

Did I mentionthis is my first year? This is when I would like to be a turtle, a big shell sounds like a good place to hide as my phone rings AGAIN! oh yeah, home number went on ALL the notes home for "if you have any errors or questions please call" . Just call me Jenny 867-5309....

wow so we werent the only ones with issues with them? humm. last year i was the fundraising chair for my sons school and i didnt step in until nov. the pres. had done the entertainment book fundraiser in sept. and they never received the prizes! poor kids. we had sereval people try to contact them asking for our prizes and were not successful in getting them.
i've since then moved and this year the new school did both the entertainment books and sally foster. i am happy to say we did recieve our prizes from both. but i wasnt involved with the fundraising this year so i cant say if there were any other problems or not.

We have never used this company and I doubt if we ever will again.

I am already getting calls that parents want there money refunded becase they're getting it so late.

I dont know what I can make the company do for not following through with their end of the deal. I think this really stinks.

Cindy