I could have written this. I remember us all making the decision which pin we wanted. It meant that initiation was not too far off. Rush was in August, initiation was in February. Our initiation fee included the plain pin (they were only gold in those days- no silver pins). I wore my Big Sister's pin until ours finally arrived full of fanfare. Unfortunately, my pledge sister/best friend loaned her pin to her little sister at initiation and the little never returned it to her.

I remember the excitement I felt when I received my pledge pin. I loved that little pin.

DaffyKD

At the chapter I advise, they order their badges in week 2, and we usually get them by end of the semester. Most times we will use bigs' badges for initiation. DPhiE doesn't provide options for badges. It's either the cheap gold plate badge with no pearls, cheap gold plate with fake pearls or 10K gold with pearls. I lost my original 10K gold with pearls badge in a move, and I ordered a new one - 6 of the 21 pearls have fallen out. It's not even worth it to keep sending it back. I'll just get a vintage one.

These days, Pledge Pins don't even leave the house / chapter room! Notice how many badges on E-Bay state they are Balfour. My friend, who is a chpater advisor, advises the new members to buy the sterling silver badge and get a vintage gold one from E-bay.

I honestly think it seems as though groups with little to no customization options have a better experience with HJ overall than those that do allow customization.

SAI National Headquarters sends badges to the chapter after the members in training have paid their initiation fees and passed the exam and chapters are not supposed to hold initiation without having received them.

I’ve thought about trying to get mine engraved, but having read all the tales of having to send them to HJ and wait to get them back…well.

My ordering experience with accessory jewelry from them has been fine—the two rings, custom chapter letter guard, and convention charm I have were all great ordering experiences, and only the charm would have been one that didn’t require much production time because I ordered it after convention had happened and I think they had a decent stock of them. The rings required time because of my ring size, and I wanted my letter guard to be the same metal as my badge (10k) and I had also fallen in love with the chased look, which didn’t cost much more than the plain gold one.

I received an alumnae honor at our convention which involves an attachment to our badge. I have a silver badge and had to order mine. Got it today. So, 3 months. But, at this time of year, when they are in overtime mode making badges, I'm pretty pleased it came so quickly.

A lot of y'all know about my struggles with HJ and their very poor quality control, so suffice it to say that I'm not surprised this is an ongoing issue and I wish more organizations would consider moving to J. Brandt or taking their business elsewhere.