I recently complained bitterly about LWW's service, and that brought an immediate response from the company.  We have now been assigned a "personal" rep who is going to great lengths to try to straighten out our mess.  We shouldn't have experienced all the problems we did, but I am convinced that LWW is finally taking the complaints to heart and is committed to improving service.  I hope everyone else will be able to say the same in the near future.   Thank you, Trish -

Stephanie N. Allen, Electronic Resources Librarian
Medical Center Library
Chandler Medical Center
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY  40536-0298
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(859) 323-6567 (voicemail)      
(859) 323-1040 (fax)
http://www.mc.uky.edu/MedLibrary

At 08:29 PM 4/18/2002 +0100, Louise Cole wrote:
I have been asked by Mary Fugle at Lippincott to forward the following:

"We at Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) apologize for the interruptions
in online service and frustration many of our customers have experienced
during the first quarter of this year.

LWW is working closely with subscription agents and our customers to amend
our policies and procedures to avoid further instances of denied access and
multiple requests for paper work.

By extending a three (3) month gracing period at the beginning of 2002, for
all online subscriptions, we believed we would avoid the problems previously
noted on this list serve.  That was not the case. We have attempted to
assign one customer number to each customer to be used for authenticating
online access.  Many of you had upwards of 20 customers numbers due to
delivery address requests, as well as company mergers.  We are exchanging
address information with subscription agents on a much more frequent basis
to keep both sets of files in sync. With one customer number, you need only
submit one copy of Schedule 1 annually to update your site license.  We are
working to post Schedule 1 on our website so that this can be e-mailed to
our E-Commerce Team, rather than continuing the convoluted path of LWW
requesting the Schedule from the agent, the agent contacting the library,
the library sending the Schedule to the agent and the agent finally sending
the Schedule to LWW.

Finally, we have amended our business processes.  Once we have an order, we
will provide access to the customer, while we wait up to three (3) months to
receive payment and Schedule 1.

We trust these steps will avoid problems in the future and hope you will
continue to work with us, facing the challenges and rapid changes taking
place in the electronic publishing venue".

Sincerely,
Mary Fugle
Director of Library & Trade Relations
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY  10014
212-886-1271
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- So, that's the situation.  Our key title is now back after three attempts
to get that magic subscriber number ...

Louise

Louise Cole
Electronic Resources Co-ordinator
University of Leeds