Ah, yes. I remember them well from last year.
I've pasted the following from their website under their heading Core
Competencies:
"Ability to Drive in Orders in All Economic Cycles - PBP is strong in all
areas of direct marketing and in particular telemarketing, where we have the
largest and best performing operation in the industry with over 600
telemarketers across PBP's 15 company-owned branches.
"Customer Needs Identification - A unique partnership between Marketing and
Editorial fuels PBP's unrelenting pursuit of identifying customer
information needs and uses. We are a market-driven company, where excellence
is defined foremost by our readers.
And unrelenting they were. Their (400-600 person) telemarketing sales staff
calls people listed in the corporate directories/Yellow Books with offers of
trial subscriptions. They claim one can write cancel on the invoice and pay
nothing, but it seemed to me that they must lose the invoices they receive
so marked. It seemed like it took MONTHS to get one trial subscription
cancelled. On the plus side, a few more people here now know to refer all
publication offers to the library.
I can't find it on their website this year, but last year I remember they
were saying that their subscriber lists were current and filled with VIPs,
sounding as though they were selling their mail lists, too.
Kay Collins, Head Librarian, US Railroad Retirement Board, Chicago
-----Original Message-----
From: Library [mailto:Library@KVN.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 11:16 AM
To: 'law-lib@ucdavis.edu'
Subject: Progressive Business Publications
Anyone else getting invoices from this outfit saying you owe money
for a newsletter they say you ordered, when you know you don't get it and
that you didn't order it? I have a bill for a $300 publication, which
covers an area of law we don't deal with. I'm listed on their invoice as
the person who placed the order, which I have no reason to have done and no
record that I did. You can't talk to a live person at their number, just
go through a voice mail maze.. Just wondering if anyone else has come
across this.
Paula Lichtenberg, Librarian
Keker & Van Nest LLP, San Francisco
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