Jostens

Remember Jostens? Class rings, cap & gown, graduation announcements... Well, I recently volunteered to be in charge of ordering, addressing and mailing graduation announcements for my brother's upcoming college graduation. (Honestly, I love doing stuff like that.) From the school's website I found ordering info linked to Jostens. I suppose of all the industries out there, this may be one of the most monopolized of all!

From the Jostens website I was able to make all the appropriate choices: college, announcements, find the correct school, choose the ceremony date, etc. From this point you in put your personal info, all the while being reminded that they do not check spelling and if you make any mistakes it is your fault and they will not correct it. Ok, I get it, I would always double check everything anyway. Once everything was entered and triple checked for accuracy, my order was placed....an expensive order at that $149 for 50 announcements!

Nevertheless, I was excited to find a box on my front porch about 10 days later. Upon opening to inspect, this is what I find:

A little plain, but it looks fine from the outside. (Although I was disappointed that the seal and lettering were not embossed, they were simply printed flat with colored ink.) Unfortunately, the inside was less than acceptable.

Yes, all the information I entered was correct, no problems there. See the last three lines at the bottom - what is that? The spacing was totally messed up! 

To make a very long and frustrating story a little shorter, I received THREE shipments with this exact same problem. They also added a new error to the second order as well, just to keep it interesting. So now, I have 150 unusable announcements on my kitchen table! When I speak with Jostens after the third shipment, they say that they will refund me $114. Excuse me? After arguing with them for almost an hour and asking repeatedly to speak to a manger, I finally got them to agree to refund the full amount. But wait, I have to ship all of them back so that they can verify there is a mistake. Are you kidding me? This started the next argument with them. Although it is against their "policy" they eventually agreed to also refund the amount for the return shipping. (I say agreed because I haven't actually gotten that reimbursement back yet.)  

Seriously, it was one of the worst customer services experiences I've ever encountered!

Jostens = Hate It

My eventual remedy to the whole announcement fiasco turned out great, so that will be coming up soon! 

Jen