At Vanderbilt we had exactly the same situation, and heard in late
2001 that Kamkin was going out of business. We had already noticed
that beginning in June 2001 many of our periodical subscriptions
were simply cut off. Claims were not answered, and no one at Kamkin
returned repeated phone calls. Despite this we paid our 2002
renewals on the assumption that if Kamkin was having problems they
would tell us. When I heard in March of 2002 that Kamkin had closed
I realized we'd apparently been wrong to put our faith in the
company. We not only lost the money we'd paid to Kamkin but had to
pay another vendor for our 2002 renewals.

It was my understanding that the Victor Kamkin bookstore had
re-opened in another location. We might consider buying books from
them, but it would take a lot to convince me that they can be
trusted with subscription orders.

--On Thursday, November 06, 2003 2:52 PM -0500 Kim Maxwell
<kmaxwell@MIT.EDU> wrote:

> MIT's experience was this:  In the Fall of 2001 we received a
> letter from a distributor in Russia called Inform-Systema. The
> letter indicated that Kamkin had not paid their bills to the
> distributor, and they (the distributor) would no longer send us
> any issues; they urged us to renew our subscriptions through
> another company.  When I emailed Kamkin, they told me
> Inform-Systema's actions were illegal and they had referred the
> matter to their attorneys; they did not answer my questions about
> whether or not the 2001 invoices had been paid.  Further messages
> to Kamkin remain completely unanswered, and I transferred our
> business elsewhere.  Not only did our new vendor, East View,
> renew our orders for 2002, they filled in whatever 2001 issues
> we'd missed (roughly half the year for each of those 50 titles) at
> no charge to MIT.
>
> It's nice to know they are still around -- competition is a
> healthy thing. I would be cautious about placing journal
> subscriptions with them, given their history and lack of
> explanation to their customers.  I have no experience dealing
> with them as a book vendor.
>
> Kim Maxwell
>
> At 07:45 AM 11/6/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>> After I posted on Victor Kamkin, Inc. yesterday I had an email
>> from Igor Kalageorgi, the president of Kamkin. Somebody
>> forwarded my message to him. He says they still have problems
>> but are still in business. I have emailed him about problems
>> some serialst posters have expressed about contacting the
>> company, or being told the company is "out of business", and he
>> does not understand that.
>>
>> Again, their web address is:
>>
>> www.kamkin.com
>>
>>
>> Of course, I do not know if Kamkin can satisfy your needs, but
>> at least the president of the company claims to be still in
>> business. When I click on that address, I am taken right to
>> their web page. The phone number on the web page is: 301 990 4010
>>
>> Jack
>>
>>
>>
>> Jack Hall
>> 114L University of Houston Libraries
>> Houston, TX  77204-2000
>> telephone:(713) 743-9687
>> e-mail: jhall@uh.edu
>> fax: (713) 743-9748

Christopher Allen Waldrop
Serials Coordinator
Order Services Department
Vanderbilt University Library
Ph: 615-343-3831
Fax: 615-343-8834