Like perhaps many of you, I enrolled our PTA in the Amazon School Rewards program after seeing the following claim in print and on their web site:

"Simply by enrolling in SchoolRewards, your school (or school group) can earn up to 10% of every purchase that staff, parents, teachers, students, and others make through Amazon. It's free -- and there are no strings attached."

I then proceeded to check my own personal purchases to see if they really did get properly tracked through the system. What I found is that only some of the orders actually get picked up (less than half) and NONE of them generated referral fees. After much correspondence with the customer service representatives, I received the following response:


"I checked our records and found that the orders tagged to your
Associates ID were in violation of our personal orders policy noted
below. It is important to note that we are a referral program, not a
discount program for friends, relatives, or associates in any manner.
If they already know you in some way, you will not earn a referral.
Without gonging into great detail, if on your Associates' account
there are any similarities to the school any purchases made from
anyone who is affiliated with the school will get hit as personal
orders.

We operate a referral program, rather than a discount program. Our
goal is to have our members refer new customers to us, and we then pay you for this effort, rather than simply offer discounts for shopping at Amazon.com

We do request that, in the future, all personal orders be placed
directly at 'www.amazon.com' through sessions not tagged to your Associates account."

I'm still wondering how my personal purchases as a parent are being discounted, when the check goes to the PTA. But the bottom line is, folks, even IF the orders make it through their system correctly, if they can figure out that you're associated with the school in any way, your school will not get paid.

I didn't expect this from Amazon, and I'm curious to see if anyone else is having problems with them? In general, this has not been worth the time it takes to get set up.