In reply to Susan Davis's comment/inquiry re: vendors paying publishers
late:  About 2-3 years ago, one of our domestic vendors paid publishers
late, and as can be imagined, problems caused by lapsed subscriptions lingered
6 mos. into the year with weeklies and dailies being the most problematic. It
took the vendor a long time to admit that they hadn't paid the publishers
on time. At first, we were told by our vendor account rep. that the
publishers had applied the payments incorrectly, but several direct calls
to (rather indignant) publishers gave us the true cause: they had not rec'd.
payment from the vendor. (Altho the vendor would never admit it outright,
I always wondered if it was a cash-flow problem: that the vendor didn't have
enough cash on hand to pay for all customers' subscription renewals at the
proscribed time, so they only paid for renewals on the portion of the customer
base they *could* afford to pay at that time, leaving the rest to languish
until the cash-flow situation improved.) The top managment at the vendor may
have thought that their agency's image or reputation would suffer if their
customers were told the truth. However, this particular vendor lost far more
by not immediately levelling with us about their failure to pay for renewals
on time -- they lost their credibility.

This year, we, too have had trouble with some lapses in newspaper subscrip-
tions.  For a number of reasons germaine to our particular local situation, the
bulk of our general collection newspapers are not checked in on-line, which IS
unfortunate, because without the issue records (which are interactive with the
claims system), not only are vital receipt data & publication patterns not re-
corded online, but also claims cannot be generated automatically.  Therefore,
it takes us longer to realize that we have a major lapse in service rather
than just a routine one.  With the exception of the East German, Soviet, and
Latin American newspapers (and a really convoluted problem with an Egyptian
newspaper), most of the lapsed subs. for popular weeklies & newspapers that
have been called to my attn. recently are with the same vendor that we had the
trouble with 2-3 yrs. ago...Not an encouraging development.

Susan, have you (and others on the discussion list) found that such lapses in
subscriptions that you are experiencing are clustered primarily with one or
two vendors, or are they more widely dispersed among all your vendor accounts?

E. Gaele Gillespie / Asst. Head, Serials / Univ. of Kansas Libraries
(913)864-3535   e-mail: GGILLESP@UKANVM    210 Watson / Lawrence, KS 66045