Barnard: Collegeboxes Is No Longer Welcome

After Collegeboxes failed to satisfy students, the Barnard Office of Residential Life and Housing has confirmed that the company will most likely not return next year.

Over the past few weeks, both Barnard and Columbia’s student housing offices have been overrun with questions and complaints from students and parents regarding Collegeboxes. While neither Barnard nor Columbia has a formal contract with Collegeboxes, some students were led to believe so.

On the Collegeboxes Web site, as well as in an e-mail sent by the company on Aug. 10 to all Columbia and Barnard students, Collegeboxes stated that “Thanks to a special arrangement with your university, we will place your items into your room before you arrive.”

While officials in Columbia’s Office of Housing and Dining confirmed that Columbia was prepared to aid Collegeboxes in its attempt to deliver items to students’ rooms before they arrived on campus, the same cannot be said for Barnard’s Office of Residential Life.
Students were led to believe that their items would be delivered before they arrived at school, despite the fact that Collegeboxes had not contacted or made any agreement with Barnard.

“Recently I have heard that Collegeboxes has said that they have an arrangement to drop things off in the rooms, and that is completely false,” says Ann Aversa, Barnard’s director of residential life and housing.

Scott Neuberger, president of Collegeboxes, said that the delivery message was “definitely communicated to people that it wasn’t applicable to,” and that “something that will come out of the situation is officially splitting those schools in our system.”
Neuberger said that, out of the roughly 750 students that his company serviced this year, around 100 boxes remain to be delivered.

“This is all going to be over in the next 24 hours,” Neuberger said. “There is going to be a big truck and they are going to bring those [100] boxes to campus tomorrow morning.”

Yet, despite Neuberger’s assurances, many students are skeptical of such promises, given the number of times Collegeboxes officials have failed to meet delivery deadlines.
The level of service provided by Collegeboxes this year has caused officials at both Columbia and Barnard to question the company’s future on campus.

“Generally we only work with vendors who have worked well with the community,” said Associate Vice President of Columbia Student Auxiliary Services Scott Wright. “We typically don’t invite people back who have had the level of problems as Collegeboxes.”
Columbia officials said that they will wait until all deliveries have been completed before they begin discussing Collegeboxes’ future on campus. But they also pointed out that the choice is ultimately up to the consumer.

“The largest voice is the student consumer voice making the decision not to use them,” Wright said. “If we were to not invite them back we would need to make sure that the other vendors are reputable.”

Barnard has taken a more definitive stance. “All I’ve heard in the last two years are nightmare stories of Collegeboxes,” Aversa said. “Were going to do our best to keep them off our campus next year.”

Jacob Shapiro can be reached at Jacob.Shapiro@columbiaspectator.com.