---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:14:34 -0400
From: "Stokes, Judith" <JStokes@RIC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Centrobe / Neodata of Boulder, CO:  A Plea for Responses

Are you alone in getting spotty service from Neodata? Gosh no!

The problem with outfits that contract to do subscription fulfillment for
mass circulation magazines is that the library market is a drop in their
subscription bucket. The truth is that if they can accurately distribute
most of the personal subscriptions on the list and do it for less money than
the next guy, they can get plenty of contracts from publishers.  Not that
popular publishers don't want to have complete runs in libraries, but that
having them does not increase circulation, so it's not tangible. Scholarly
publishers have academic reputations to worry about, but popular ones show
their appeal by having large stacks on every newsstand.

Our agent (Ebsco) does try, but by the time they realize that our first
claim has not been filled, and they call and get a human being to respond
and send the proof of payment to that person's attention, the response is
usually that the issues are all gone anyway. Our best solution has been to
replace all our backfiles of mass circulation magazines with microfilm on
subscription. That doesn't eliminate the claiming problems, but it does mean
we can "start fresh" the next year even if we never do get those issues.
Also, when we get duplicates, we send copies of the mailing labels to Ebsco.
Since the fulfillment houses don't bother about tracking renewals -- they
just hand over every payment record to a typist to type up a subscription
record-- regardless of whatever format or subscription numbers are submitted
-- we often find we have two subscriptions with two differently numbered
labels and different expiration dates that will both come before December.
At that point, if the claims rep can get them to consolidate the
subscriptions, we can actually avoid some hassles later on.

Good luck!

Judith Stokes, Serials Librarian
James P. Adams Library, Rhode Island College
Providence, RI  02908
phone: (401)456-8165
email: jstokes@ric.edu