How Scholar’s Choice Saved My Son’s Science Party
Once you have kids, you become intimately acquainted with all the toy stores in your immediate vicinity. From Toys R Us to Mastermind Toys and from Walmart and the big department stores, there’s always a place nearby for your kids to get their toy fix.
Another toy store is Scholar’s Choice. While they have a fairly large Toy Store, their Teacher’s Store is even more impressive. This is all stuff that I already knew. What I learned on the weekend was what true Customer Service is all about…
Book Boy wanted a science party for his 7th birthday. At first, I investigated using a third party to handle the experiments (Mad Science popped up for our area). After seeing their prices of between $250 to $350 for the size of party we were going to have, I determined that I could do this myself… (cue image of father going to fix plumbing on his own to save some money…)
At first, I found a great site called birthdaypartyideas.com filled to the brim with brilliant ideas for different science parties. Many of the examples referred to different items they purchased from Steve Spangler Science. Unfortunately, the cost to ship to Canada was extremely prohibitive. After deciding on doing name badges with hidden super powers on the back (revealed by a UV light) and an Insta-Snow experiment (among other things), I started my search for the two items.
I found the UV light and invisible ink pen at Efston Science (after searching for an ungodly number of hours on the Internet…). The actual set below wasn’t even on their website but I took a chance and found what I was looking for… perfect!
Invisible ink pen with UV light
Guest nametag on front
Hidden superpower in invisible ink
I found the Insta-Snow on the Scholar’s Choice website and ordered a 1 lb bag over the telephone. Unfortunately, the bag didn’t arrive by the date I needed it on and the package was now stuck in a Purolator office that was closed for the weekend! So on Friday night, I sent a panicked email to Scholar’s Choice. To my surprise, that same evening, I received an email reply from none other than the President, Scott Webster, saying he’s looking into the problem and will get back to me… this is Friday night at 11:00 pm!!!
After several emails and calls back and forth, the Oshawa and Ajax store were able to get me enough tubes of Insta-Snow on the weekend to ensure that Book Boy’s science party was successful (which it was).
Kudos also to Jan and Aaron at Creative Play where we held our party. With 28 kids running around doing science experiments, they were extremely helpful and very accommodating … as usual!
Bottom line, I don’t think I would have gotten the same kind of personalized, customer service from many other stores and sufficed to say, Scholar’s Choice has earned a new, loyal customer. Keep up the great work!
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Loved the article.
Planning my son’s birthday party and I think you have helped me with your ideas.
Julie
Glad to help Julie and thanks for your comments!
If there’s one other thing I learned, its that most 7 year olds have a very short attention span so you have to keep things going and make it interesting.
Best of luck with your party!
Hi!
I’m wondering who made that great cake. I’m going to try and replicate it & need to know that the hair is made of…
Thanks!
Jody
Do NOT buy from any Scholar’s Choice.
We had to return an item our son didn’t want. They insisted that we provide them with personal information or we can’t get a refund (after only just three days from when we bought the item).
The purchase was made by credit card, we had the receipt and the credit card.
It was almost $100, so we gave them the information.
I contacted their head office, and I was rudely told that it was their store policy, even though I’m sure this is against Canadian privacy laws.
Less than a week later, we started receiving unsolicited junk mail from “educational specials offers” from several mail order companies.
Scholar’s Choice SOLD our personal information!!!!
Beware!!!!