Herff Jones Over-priced goods, unprofessional service - don't do business with them! , Internet

I work at a large academic institution and as one of the new faculty members I had to purchase academic regalia for use at the beginnings and ends of the school year.

Even though their catalogs (even online) don't have photos of the items and their prices were more expensive than what I had been used to seeing (doctoral gowns for $481, tams for $81.40), we all went with them because we assumed it would be the easiest and least expensive route (Herff Jones is the main company our university works with). What wrong assumptions!

Shipping and handling starts at $19.95. However, while we ordered weeks in advance, we received an email a few days after the orders were submitted saying that we EACH had to pay an extra 35 bucks for next day air! When we asked why shipping costs were $55, we were told that it was "necessary" to receive our items in time for the ceremony. We attempted to work with them - to see if all of our orders could be shipped together, to see if we could get 2nd day air shipping, etc, but they were:
1. Extremely slow to respond
2. Very rude and unprofessional once they did respond
3. Inflexible to any sort of compromise

We ended up each paying the extra charges for shipping and received our regalia with still 2 weeks to spare. I'm sorry, but why was next day air necessary?? Why couldn't orders be combined if they were all ordered at the same time and were shipped to the same location??

This organization is completely unprofessional and care more about making an extra buck (or 50!) than providing good customer service. There are a lot of other companies that offer academic regalia and if you're in the process of searching for such goods, PLEASE do NOT support Herff Jones.