Business ProfileforSupport Black Colleges

According to information in BBB files, Support Black Colleges has a pattern of complaints alleging consumers purchased items on their website, https://supportblackcolleges.org/, however, the items are never shipped nor received.

The consumers further allege they may receive a general response email with an update in reference to the delay of shipping but do not receive responses when they inquire about their specific product or shipping information.

On February 2, 2021, BBB contact the company seeking their voluntary cooperation in elimination the pattern of complaints.

On February 4, 2021, Support Black Colleges provided the following response to the pattern of complaint:

HOW WE GOT HERE
Beginning around August 2020, a series of events led to us getting severely behind. Our overseas manufacturers who produce the patches for our most popular product, our signature adult hoodie, were closed down completely for several months due to COVID leaving us to only use what we had left and to try to find another vendor that could make the product exactly the same. This proved to not be possible and we simply had to wait. Our warehouse also suffered a massive flood that ruined many of the specialty items. These were pieces that we only made a limited number of and were not planning to produce more. Many of our customers were refunded. Our blank hoodie manufacturer also saw issues of their own, so there was limited availability for us to get what we needed. Simultaneously we were trying to use our funds in the way that made the most sense before they ran out while we were unable to run Facebook ads, they stopped us from being able to do so after the complaints began. We were able to hire a team to help us get out as many orders as possible and we were able to get in a somewhat decent position after that, but the orders continued to roll in. Over the course of these months we did the best we could to balance ordering merchandise, getting it produced, and shipping it out as quickly and as cost effectively as possible. During this time we felt it best to utilize all of the bodies we had to solely focus on getting orders filled and customer service became less of a priority, this includes responding to BBB complaints as well. Immediately once we fully realized the impact this was having we hired an overseas freelance rep to hop on emails as soon as possible, and our COO also went back to assisting with those as well.

WHERE WE ARE NOW
We are truly on the move! We were able to not only receive a PPP loan, but our new production facility can produce up to about 10,000 hoodies a week. Every day we ship out between 300-600 orders starting with the oldest ones from Black Friday. This will increase as we move into next week when the production facility gets the next batch complete! In addition to fully resuming answering individual customer service inquires, we have sent multiple email blasts with updates for customers and posted several posts and videos to our IG and Facebook pages with updates. Here are some of the mass correspondences we have posted for customers with their updates:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKo2VJ2Hsh9/?igshid=1kiisg6iubh3i
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJZBtXBH136/?igshid=yqj790r8883z
The email attachment below was sent once on 12/29/2020 and again on 01/12/2021


We've also sent individual updates to every single DM that comes through our IG.


ETA OF COMPLETION
We can confidently say that we expect to be fully caught up by 02/13/2021. If for any reason we are not able to adhere to that another mass email and IG post will be sent.

After the last complaint analysis we do not show any change or decrease in the established pattern of complaints.

BBB will monitor this company's efforts, and this aspect of the Business Profile will be updated once additional information becomes available.