My Eye-Opening Experience
Let me begin with full disclosure.
I'm Judy W, the "Customer Champion" at Sonlight. I've been a long-time Sonlight user (still am). I've been a Sonlight Curriculum Consultant (still am). I've talked with hundreds- actually thousands-of Sonlight customers and potential customers. And, as Customer Champion, it is my job to look out for your interests. (If you need to get in touch with me, my email address is champion@sonlight.com.)
Several months ago, John Holzmann- whom you will recognize as a co-owner of Sonlight-asked me to do the experiment suggested in the headline to this article. He wanted me to do the experiment in such a way that I could report accurately on all the details. He wanted an authentic report: "I don't think Sonlight's prices are as bad as many people think," he said. "But if our prices really are uncompetitive, I want to know. We need to know. We will have to change our pricing strategy."
That's the kind of guy I've found John to be. He wants honesty and openness.
So he asked me to check four representative Sonlight programs-programs that a lot of potential Sonlight customers might like to know about.
We had no idea how the numbers would turn out. We figured that good "representative samples" would include Newcomer™ 1, Newcomer™ 5, and Core 300 combined with the 300-level science program ("Exploring Creation with Chemistry") and the Thinkwell Pre-Calculus math program.
I wanted the prices to be as recent as possible, so I did the comparison in February 2006 (as close to the Sonlight catalog publication date as we could afford).
John asked me to compare Sonlight to the world's largest online bookstore ("Merchant A"), one of the nation's largest chains of "big box" bookstores ("Merchant B"), and an online book merchant that offers the most aggressive pricing John is aware of-"Merchant C."
John asked me to tell him:
- How tough was it for me to find everything I was looking for?
- How much, if any, money would I save by ordering what I could from someone other than Sonlight?
- What was my experience like?
I have to tell you, my experiment was a real eye-opener for me!
Here is what I discovered.
I started with the big-box bookstore.
In the bookstore-Merchant B
I drove 20 minutes one-way and spent just over two hours in Merchant B's store. During that time, I was able to locate only 35 of the almost 400 books I had on my list. I asked a clerk what the best way was to find the rest. She offered to look them up for me on their web site, but indicated it would be just as easy for me to do that from home.
I asked about items I might not find on their site (books that would need special ordering). She told me that if it wasn't on their site then they couldn't get it for me. She suggested under those circumstances that I go to a competitor's site. I left without purchasing the materials I needed.
Not long after this initial shopping attempt, John told me something I had not been aware of before. He said I could get a 20% "educator's discount" from Merchant B. I called my store, and the lady I spoke with explained that I could get the educator's discount if I contacted my school district for an official letter indicating that I was indeed homeschooling. Living in the fairly "homeschool-antagonistic" school district I do, I knew this could be an adventure in its own right. I asked if the educator's discount would apply to online orders, and she said no-it only works if I purchase in the store.
John urged me to make a list of all the books I could find on Merchant B's website, and then actually buy them from the store so I could get the discount.
So I took two hours to make my list from the website, did what I needed to qualify for my educator's discount card, and headed out to the store for the second time. (Another 20- minute drive.)
The clerk directed me to the order desk to place my order. I had my 11-year-old son with me, so, not knowing how long this would take, I sent him back to the kid's section to browse and wait for me. Am I ever glad I did!
When I got to the order desk, I had to wait since there was no one there to take my order. On the large counter in front of me there was a single magazine display, the cover featuring eight female models who were essentially topless. As I stood waiting the 5-6 minutes it took someone to come to the desk, I spent my time trying to look anywhere but at this lone display item on the desk! I was also thanking the Lord that my 11-year-old son was not standing there with me, as the display would have been right at eye-level for him.
The lady who finally waited on me explained that she could take my list but couldn't place my order as the person who does that task wasn't in that day. She advised that it would be at least the following Monday (I was there on a weekend) before someone could work on my order, and that I wouldn't hear from anyone until my order was completely in the store. Ultimately, I did hear from someone who stated that she would be working on my order . . .
I still need to return to the store to pick up my books . . . whenever they get there. The store has given me no firm commitment about when my order will be available.
On the Web-Merchants A & C
My visits to the online booksellers produced similar results and similar frustrations. Merchant A and Merchant C use different search methods. I spent about two hours on each merchant's site typing in titles and searching. At both web sites, there were items I needed that were either not available, or impossible to locate.
In other instances, I entered book titles only to have the online search engine display multiple versions of the same book. In these cases I used a "cheat sheet" John gave me to confirm, via ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers), which books were the same as those that Sonlight offers. Without that list, I would have been hard-pressed to know which version to buy so my purchase would match Sonlight's Instructor's Guide notes for that product.
And then there were all the titles that the online merchants didn't carry. In those cases I was usually bombarded with search results that listed dozens of books, none of which was the right one, but all of which had similar words in their titles. I had to scan the list to make sure I wasn't accidentally missing a better deal than Sonlight would offer!
Overall, I found that it takes a great deal of patience to type in and search for all the titles when shopping online at Sonlight's "discount" competitors as compared to the one- or two-click order process Sonlight offers for its complete packages.
The Rest of the Story
I have to confess that the numbers in the accompanying chart don't tell the whole story. In order to bring the prices of the two online competitors in line with Sonlight's, I had to utilize their free shipping options which means U.S. Postal Service Media Mail, which cannot be tracked and often takes a week and a half in transit. And that's after they mail the books. Sonlight's free shipping, for any order over $100, is FedEx Ground.
And if you've had any experience with Merchant A, you know that they don't always have the books in stock.
But then there are the "extras" Sonlight offers that I haven't even counted in my comparison. So. Let me see. By breaking up my purchases,
- I spent hours of extra time.
- I qualified only for Sonlighters Club "Classic" membership-one-year free access to Sonlight's support forums rather than the two I would have gotten had I bought the entire Core from Sonlight.
- I lost the free Sonlight tote bag.
- I got no "Love to Learn" guarantee.
- I received slow, untraceable Media Mail shipping from the discount merchants.
- On every "completing" purchase from Sonlight, I actually qualified for the 5% "Classic" Sonlighters Club discount on orders of $450 or more. Barely. But I qualifi ed. So I included that discount in my "Total Cost" calculations of the competitors.
To summarize, then: Having spent hours of bother, and even including the 5% Sonlight discount-Sonlight "won" the pricing battle two out of four times. Merchant B and Merchant C won one time apiece, though Merchant B required major contortions on my part to achieve its singular "win."
Put another way, by playing the role of the most aggressive penny-pincher, I spent hours of my precious time, lost several valuable benefi ts, and still came up short half the time.
My opinion: for the two times I could have "won" by using an alternative source, the time I spent and the frustrations I endured did not offset my "savings."
Would they offset yours?
* * Addendum: 3/13/06 * *
Two weeks and six days after I placed my order in-store with Merchant B, they called me to say it had arrived.
My husband and I made the 20-minute trip to the store together and I presented myself at the front desk. "I'm here to pick up the books I ordered a few weeks ago. Someone called to tell me my order was in. . . . "
The clerk began hunting in earnest to find my order. After no success, she checked back with me: "You said you received a phone call?"
"Yes. Just this morning."
So she continued to hunt. I explained that it had to be in a fairly large box as there were 60-some books in the order.
She continued to hunt. Then she checked back with me to see if it was a "school" order or a personal one. I explained I was a homeschooler.
After looking for 8 to 10 minutes, she was able to finally locate my one very large box and one smaller one. Then she pulled off the invoice attached to it and attempted to scan the total into her cash register. It didn't work. She checked with an associate and neither of them was able to make it work. Finally, she ended up having to manually punch in the pricing for all 60+ books, one by one.
About half an hour after entering the store, my husband and I were able to leave with our order in hand. And 20 minutes after that, we were home.
Needless to say, I have decided Merchant B will not be winning a lot of my homeschool business!
