In article <rhughes.40.0 at ucsd.edu> rhughes at ucsd.edu (Richard J. Hughes) writes:
>Has anyone else been having trouble ordering the Entrez CD-ROM from the US
>Government Printing Office? I have had plenty of difficulty.
>>I initially faxed an order, waited, received no response and faxed a
>query. Still no reponse. Thanks to help from the Net, I managed to locate
>their voice telephone number. I had in fact sent the faxes to the correct
>telephone number but they had been ignored because they didn't include a
>check (?...but that's what they said). I wonder why they even have a FAX
>number.
>>When you call the Gov't Printing Office, you are put on hold for a long
>time. When someone finally answers, the audio is so faint as to be almost
>indiscernable (maybe 5 dB above background). I and one of our secretaries
>have called them on four separate occasions and have made very little
>headway. The audio always borders on the inaudible and whoever you speak to
>passes the buck (and you) to someone else. You can just tell that they
>aren't interested in selling you this CD-ROM.
>>Turns out that they won't send out the goods without prepayment. UCSD
>P.O.'s aren't good enough. But UCSD can't generate a P.O. number without an
>invoice. The Gov't printing office doesn't want to send invoices without
>the goods. Catch 22.
>>**<<flame on>>**
>It ticks me off that I'm paying taxes to support these bozos in a job
>that they don't give a damn about.
>**<<flame off>>**
>>Maybe the best thing to do is not to order from them. That way maybe the
>Gov't won't be able to justify paying all those bozos to jerk us around.
>>Richard
YES - We have experienced difficulty also - I received 3 post cards telling
me to wait up to 6 weeks before delivery. I'm not sure now whether we will ever
get them as we too need an invoice before an account can be settled. Thanks
for alerting me to this - I will need to chase it up.
Tony Parsons aka
(parsons_a at snd01.pcr.co.uk) Pfizer Central research UK
