Spotted on UK LIS LAW this morning . Are Kluwer falling into the same traps as Lexis & Westlaw . We hope not it’d be a shame
A librarian from the UK writes
We recently received our subscription invoice for 2012 for the Encyclopaedia of Health and Safety at Work. I don’t know if you will have the same problem, but they initially billed us incorrectly. According to the customer service agent I spoke with, this product has “migrated”, meaning they now ‘package’ the looseleaf with a telephone advice line and an e-newsletter. In doing so, they mixed up the charges, thus charging us VAT incorrectly (?152.70). Essentially, the package breaks down like this:
1- Paper portion of the looseleaf: ?385.78
2- Telephone advice line: ?179.39
3- E-newsletter: ?284.08
Therefore, in this package, the two portions that our library does not want (e-newsletter and advice line), cost more than the encyclopaedia itself (?463.47), and incur a very hefty amount of VAT (?92.69). Wolters Kluwer refuses to sell just the encyclopaedia, but the customer service agent said that if I can compile complaints from different organizations, he will be able to escalate the complaint, and we might be able to persuade them to sell us just the encyclopaedia, without the add-ons.
If you also find it absurd that a publisher is forcing us to buy products that we do not want or need, please send me your letter of complaint and I will compile them and send them as a batch to him. If you want to retain any of the add-ons, that shouldn’t affect the complaint, as we should all be given the choice as to what, exactly, we want to purchase.
He also advised me to hold back the renewal for at least a month, and this should not affect our subscription being sent in time.
