Karl,
We had a similar problem a few years ago when we merged with
another firm. Firm A (with 2 offices) became part of Firm B (us with
5 offices) and was to be known in the future as Firm B (totalling 7
offices). Firm A had a lot of library materials from various publishers,
ie. Matthew Bender, Banks Baldwin, West, L Coop, CBC, etc. In a
letter to each publisher, I cleary explained about the merger and name
change of Firm A and requested that all materials continue to be shipped
to the same locations of Firm A (only change the name to Firm B) and
send the bills to me in our Akron office.
Well, many of the publishers decided to rearrange everything for us.
All of a sudden, EVERYTHING FOR EVERY OFFICE began going
to one of our southern offices, but the bills came to me in Akron.
When I attempted to correct this, EVERYTHING started going to yet
another office and the bills went to even another office. It was a huge
mess. It took time and patience (too much of both!) to get everything
back in proper order.
Then there was the time when we closed one of our offices and I sent
letters to the publishers advising them of the closing and requested that
they discontinue subscriptions that were going ONLY to the office that
was being closed. Well, we started to notice that some subscriptions in
our other offices were not getting supplements. When I asked about
this, I was told by publishers that I had requested them to be cancelled.
Well..... it took us some time, but we finally got that cleared up!
Then there was the time when one of our subscriptions from one
publisher (Thompson) was transferred from one office to another. My
letter clearly stated that only that subscription (title) should be
transferred. Thompson decided to transfer everything on the account to
the other office where the ONE title was going. Hmmmm..
Needless to say, I'm wondering if I will see repeats of these horror
stories in the near future. Good luck to all of us!
Beth
Beth Blondin
Director of Library and Information Services
Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs
Akron, OH
(330) 258-6495
INTERNET: beth_blondin@akron.bdblaw.com
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
NAYSAYERS - 1 OPTIMISTS - 0
Boy, am I mad. It's turned out that the naysayers on the WIPG and
CBC
merger are right at least for our shops. We have 4 domestic offices, the
smallest one located in the state capital but the highest in the alphabet,
beginning with A for Austin. It appears that the merger of our CBC
publications billing into our WIPG billing has taken all the publications
originally going to our Houston office, our largest office, and our
Dallas
office, the second largest, and lumped them all into the bill for Austin,
probably because that is the first listing for our firm they ran across
when
they were going through an alphabetical list. Not only that, we received
two bills dated one day different, both with the same total and many of
the same materials (at least the item numbers match up) but with
different
dates. One had dates back to November '96 but the other began with
January
'97. Both had the Austin address on all but the last page which had,
get
this, the Dallas address.
Austin may have ten CBC titles while the other offices have about a
hundred
titles, with duplicates in multiples for those offices. Further checking
shows that all supplementation will be mailed to our Austin location.
We did not find out the final fact about mailing from WIPG Customer
Service.
Nope, they told us we needed to rectify the account ourselves. They
were
kinda snotty about it, too, like it was our fault. I suppose in a way it
is in that we have continued to purchase CBC publications. Now the
poor
CBC service has infected what used to be a good operation.
I have always felt sorry for the smaller firm librarians who didn't have
the
large accounts which generally command quick, courteous service.
Now we will
ALL have the opportunity to know what it feels like.
As I see it my Firm has about three choices.
1) Pay the bill and try to change the titles over as they come in; the
most
work for us.
2) Don't pay the bill and hold out until someone calls us to fix the
situation; more fun than choice 1 and requiring less work. I like this
one.
3) Cancel all the CBC publications and reinstate them one by one with
the proper address and billing; I like this one the best and I know my
local representative will like it too. It has the added feature of
letting me cull out those titles I haven't gotten around to cancelling
in the past.
Anyone else with merger horrors like this?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Karl T. Gruben * Internet kgruben@starbase.neosoft.com
*
Vinson & Elkins * Telephone 713-758-2679 *
1001 Fannin * Fax 713-758-2346 *
Houston, TX 77002-6760 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * *
My opinions are my own and are not necessarily those of my bosses.
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