Dear Jeanette,
Thank you sincerely for your careful and informative reply.  It seems
you've hit the spot in your last sentence - due to another system
problem, our UV _cannot_ confirm cancellation _dates_, not without
a manual title-by-title search, which they warn us will "take some
time".  In another reply (most people replied off-list) someone
mentioned another aspect of this problem - they never were able to
deal with anyone higher up the organization than their normal contac
person.  No senior office-holder got involved.
        This is what made me email the List actually.  I felt rather
exposed, and wondered if a problem of this magnitude _should_ be handled
by a serials unit in correspondence with a vendor contact person, or
whether higher levels of administration on both sides should be
enlisted.
        I have received several useful repliesm which I am forwarding
to my Library administration, and although I know the reply-rate falls
sharply after day 1, please if any other people have advice to offer,
or have even had similar problems, I'll be very glad to hear from you.
        Best wishes,
        Lesley Tweddle
        Head, Serials Unit, American University in Cairo Library
        LTWEDDLE@ACS.AUC.EUN.EG