Parents still await school book deliveries

CLAIMS BY an online school bookseller that an order backlog has been cleared were rejected yesterday by customers who are still waiting for orders.

The Schoolbooks.iebacklog resulted in thousands of parents waiting weeks for the delivery of books.

Yesterday morning Schoolbooks.ieissued a statement in which it said it was "pleased to report" that it had cleared the backlog of customer orders, "which resulted from a technical issue we had in our warehouse some weeks ago".

The company said the outstanding 1,400 orders were sent for delivery in the early part of this week. However several customers subsequently contacted this newspaper to say they were still waiting for their books and were having difficulty making contact with the company.

“I can’t get through to their call centre at all on either number. Books were supposed to be here yesterday,” one person said.

“We ordered about €220 worth of books a couple of weeks ago but haven’t received them yet,” another reader who contacted The Irish Times said.

“As the kids are back to school on Thursday my wife rang them this afternoon to see how long more the books would take to arrive and the person who answered the phone didn’t know.

“She said they got an internal update today at lunchtime, telling them that 90 per cent of orders should be filled by Thursday. But she couldn’t give any commitment regarding our particular order.”

The company responded with a follow-up statement outlining the precise nature of its deliveries this week.

It said that on Monday and early yesterday 5,800 customer orders were delivered, while a further 1,100 customers would get their books by yesterday evening.

“Based on our experience, we expect approximately 60 of 1,820 orders we attempt to deliver today not to be completed due to various issues such as customers not being home or incorrect addresses being supplied,” the company said.

“Any issues relating to these deliveries will be rectified and delivered tomorrow. Our dates for delivery are based on the most children returning to school on Thursday.”