Oh yes, we have had problems with Wiley, and with Blackwell before they merged. A subscription agent is definitely worth the money. We check all our Blackwell and Wiley titles every winter, not just ones we have changed, and we find chances are at least one title will not have been renewed, and my emails to the  publishers are never answered.

One time, our Nursing Dept. assigned an entire class to read an article in a January issue and  we discovered Blackwell didn't process our renewal, I just sent an email to the Ebsco e-journals specialist with "emergency" in the subject line, and she had our access back up within a couple of hours!

Good luck,

Judith E. Stokes
Serials/E-resources Librarian
Rhode Island College
600 Mount Pleasant Avenue
Providence, RI 02908-1991
401.456.8165

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Carly Bachman
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:59 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Wiley-Blackwell Subscriptions - Customer Service Problems Anyone?

Hello all,

I am wondering if anyone has had serious customer service issues with Wiley and if/how you successfully resolved the problem(s)...

Months ago we started trying to contact Wiley in order to try and receive price quotes for our Blackwell subscriptions that were being transferred. We were told that regular renewal invoices would be sent out shortly.  We have never received anything and our subscriptions are set to expire at the end of the year.  When I finally called them directly in October, we were told that the customer agent assigned to our account was no longer in the subscriptions dept. and they would forward my information to someone else.  This person never contacted me, so eventually I made contact with him after multiple email and phone call attempts.

At this point I actually became briefly optimistic because this person seemed responsive to our request for price quotes and questions regarding the new pricing models.  He asked us for some further information about our Library's users and IP addresses, which I sent off the same day.  That was a month ago.  Unfortunately, I have not heard back from him since then.  I have written multiple emails.  I have called.  Yesterday our chief librarian sent an email to someone else she hopes might be in charge of marketing or general services, but we are beginning to lose all hope that they have any intention of responding to us.

Has anyone else had anything like this happen?  Any advice for someone pretty new to this?  I am completely at a loss and am not sure what to do....switch all the subscriptions to someone like Swets?  This unfortunately might cost much more than staying with Wiley.

Thank you for any and all advice you can offer us.

Cheers,

Carly Bachman
ECLAC Library
United Nations
Santiago, Chile

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