Supplemental billings & quality of vendor services (was: Cent robe / Neodata of Boulder Marcia Tuttle 13 Apr 2001 17:32 UTC
From: Gillespie, Gaele Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 11:57 AM Subject: RE: Centrobe / Neodata of Boulder, CO: A Plea for Responses (Linda Fairbanks) In response to Linda Fairbanks's posting about supplemental billings and quality of vendor services: If you don't want to deal with supplemental invoices, then consider renegotiating your account/invoicing profile with your vendor(s) to bill you on the firm-pricing model. Firm pricing means that your vendor will bill you only when they get the actual, firm price of a subscription/standing order title from the publisher. It is when vendors bill you *before* they have the actual, firm prices that you will receive supplemental invoices for price increases that occur between the time the vendor invoices you and the time that the publisher actually sets the firm price for the title and invoices the vendor. In our experience, Swets Blackwell (both the NJ and Oxfordshire service centers), Nijhoff, and Harrassowitz are the most amenable to and consistent with firm pricing (it means less work for them, too, when you think about the labor involved with supplemental invoicing); Ebsco and Faxon are less inclined to either remember to abide by the firm-pricing model from year to year (even after it's been requested as part of your account/invoice profile), or are not set up to do it, or do not care to do it -- in other words, it takes more negotiation, follow-up and monitoring with Ebsco and Faxon than with Swets Blackwell, Nijhoff, and Harrassowitz. Ebsco does have a "service" (we don't use it, so I don't know what it's called -- but it was discussed on SERIALST a few months ago and if you search the archives, you'll find those postings) which involves a fee of some sort whereby you will not get supplemental invoices even if you've prepaid early (before the publisher has set their prices), but you will also not receive any credit memos for the price decreases that also can, and will, occur. However, it just doesn't make sense to agree to pay an additional fee to a vendor to NOT create supplemental invoices when the solution exists via the firm-pricing option. And take heart, Linda, because YES (speaking for myself and my staff), we certainly like our subscription services. No vendor does everything perfectly, and some could do certain things better, but our vendors also provide a variety of important services. Maintaining optimal levels of vendor-publisher-customer communication is an on-going challenge. Also, quality of service is a shared responsibility: to ensure that the vendor-publisher-customer relationship is all it can be, we have a responsibility to review and monitor our vendors' services and then request changes and improvements where necessary and desirable. -- Gaele E. Gaele Gillespie / Serials Librarian / University of Kansas Libraries / e-mail: ggillespie@ukans.edu / phone: 785-864-3051 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 10:56:21 -0500 From: Linda Fairbanks <lfairban@TRITON.CC.IL.US> Subject: Re: Centrobe / Neodata of Boulder, CO: A Plea for Responses (Stephen Perisho) Hi Stephen Your message really strikes home. Last Friday I spent time writing a similar rant about EBSCOhost, who handles our periodical subscriptions. We have had a terrible time with publishers sending us two or even three subsriptions where we only (should!) have one and it has taken EBSCO way too long to stop it. We also get price increases passed on to us constantly. Admitedly, I'm new to managing serials, but I would have thought that having paid for a year's subscription, I'd get a year at that price. Do all subscription services simply agree to and then send on, publishers random price increases? I'm not sure which made me angrier, the invoice for a $6 price rise or the one for a couple thousand. I wish I could tell you I was happy with my service, but I'm not. Does anybody out there LIKE their subscription service? Linda Linda C. Fairbanks Director of Technical Services Triton College Library, R-214B 2000 Fifth Avenue River Grove, IL 60171 Office: (708) 456-0300 x3424 e-mail: <lfairban@triton.cc.il.us> http://www.triton.cc.il.us