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Many thanks to everyone who took the time to reply!  I am new to the
listserv, so forgive me for not posting a hit until now.  I hope I did it
correctly.
Most seem to be  in favor of Follett!  I will include the ones from today
and yesterday just to give you an idea because there are zillions. This is
very long as it is.
Very best to all.

Kim Tison, LMS
Park Street Elementary School
Kennebunk, Maine
ktison@msad71.net

I used BT one year, and I will never use them again. That was the worst
service that I had ever had and some of the books that they sent me were
UNBELIEVABLE! (Golden books--like the ones that you buy at the grocery
store, for one example.) I have never had any problems with Follett.
_____________________
I have had experience with both Follett and B&T and have not had problems
with either. I worked in a large public library for a year, and we ordered
from B&T.  We found it to be the best.  We had wonderful service, great
fill
rate, and if we did have a problem it was handled right away and to our
satisfaction.  Once I started in a school, I tried both companies and have
found Follett to be better for us.  Titlewave is a wonderful tool and I use
it all the time.  B&T online ordering was not as good in my opinion and I
seemed to have a longer fill rate on some things.  Ultimately, I think it
all comes down to preference and your experience with each company.
_____________________________
Personally, I pretty much gave up on Follett when their "library bound"
books started losing their pages the second year I had them. My students
love the size of Permabound & they stand behind their books. I don't buy
everything there, but they do get a lot of my AR order
Personally, I pretty much gave up on Follett when their "library bound"
books started losing their pages the second year I had them. My students
love the size of Permabound & they stand behind their books. I don't buy
everything there, but they do get a lot of my AR order.
________________

I, too, finally feel the need to weigh in on this
discussion. Many of the people who feel so strongly
about Follett are elementary school librarians, and my
understanding is that for that level, Follett is
wonderful. I have been ordering from B&T for 11 years
at the upper levels (middle and high school), and have
a wonderful fill rate. In addition, when there are
problems, and in my experience they are few and far
between, the customer service people bend over
backward to fix the problem. I have accused Francis,
who is our rep, of having to have taken a 'nice' test
to get the job. The discounts are wonderful, we get
free shipping, and our fill rate is really good. Just
wanted to present a point of view from the other side.
________________
I have used Follett for twelve years and always received excellent =
service on all orders from $70.00 to $7000.00. No complaints at all.
___________
I LOVE Follett.  I have had excellent service from the 2 reps with which I
have had dealings.  Depending upon the year, I have had a total budget to
spend from $4,000 to $10,000, so I don't believe the amount spent with the
company determines the quality of the service.

In 1994-95 Baker and Taylor was working hard to get my business.  The rep
kept telling me how much cheaper B&T was over Follett.  I decided to order
a
small order from B&T and compare pricing.  On publisher binding books, B&T
did have a deeper discount, but I try to order all library binding, so this
was not of real value to me.  On library binding the prices were about the
same.
     I did not like the B&T barcodes.  The print was smaller and more
difficult to read.

    Follett has always followed my specifications perfectly.  Now that the
company has online ordering, the orders arrive in about 3 weeks (to my
amazement!)
      The only negative I have with Follett is the rebinding Follett does
has unattractive covers--the colors are not sharp and clear.
       Twice I have had a problem with 1 book in the order. The rep arrived
within 2 days and fixed things to my satisfaction.
         In reading the various comments, I have thought about the
discussions of Scholastic Book Fairs.  My conclusion: The happiness with a
company depends upon the quality of the sales rep and the attention to your
business.
_______________________

I LOVE Follett.  I have had excellent service from the 2 reps with which I
have had dealings.  Depending upon the year, I have had a total budget to
spend from $4,000 to $10,000, so I don't believe the amount spent with the
company determines the quality of the service.

In 1994-95 Baker and Taylor was working hard to get my business.  The rep
kept telling me how much cheaper B&T was over Follett.  I decided to order
a
small order from B&T and compare pricing.  On publisher binding books, B&T
did have a deeper discount, but I try to order all library binding, so this
was not of real value to me.  On library binding the prices were about the
same.
     I did not like the B&T barcodes.  The print was smaller and more
difficult to read.

    Follett has always followed my specifications perfectly.  Now that the
company has online ordering, the orders arrive in about 3 weeks (to my
amazement!)
      The only negative I have with Follett is the rebinding Follett does
has unattractive covers--the colors are not sharp and clear.
       Twice I have had a problem with 1 book in the order. The rep arrived
within 2 days and fixed things to my satisfaction.
         In reading the various comments, I have thought about the
discussions of Scholastic Book Fairs.  My conclusion: The happiness with a
company depends upon the quality of the sales rep and the attention to your
business.
_________________
Ditto!!!  I know that others in my district use Mackin, neighboring
districts use BTSB, but I remain a avid Follett user. Titlewave is
absolutely the easiest web-based ordering system I have seen...I have
tried to use Mackin, BTSB, and Permabound and am irritated with
'something' about each of them. I do order my books with NO processing
as we prefer to make our own LARGER PRINT spine labels, but the
barcodes are printed off of Follett's circ+ and we catalog with
Alliance. Since we need to add the vendor information anyway, it is
actually easier for us to do it ourselves. It actually doesn't take any
longer for the books to be ready for the shelves, but since we get the
books quicker, we can decide which ones we want to push through first
instead of waiting for the entire batch, which we would need to do if
we had them pre-process. (Yes I have an assistant!!!!) No I don't have
$300,000 to spend...perhaps $2,000 specifically to Follett each school
year.
_________________
Jack may have a large amount to spend, but the money does not change how
Follett treats their customers.
I spend only about $1000 each year thru Follett and I have wonderful
service. A few times I ordered the wrong book and the correct one was sent
right out at no charge to me. My order is always prepared to my
specifications. My sales man stops by once or twice a year with Caldecott
and Newbery posters. Their fill rate is better than B&T. And Titlewave is a
wonderful time saving tool.

The first thing to do when there is a problem is get in touch with your
sales rep. If things are not fixed, go up the chain of command. Follett
relies on libraries and they need our business.
___________________
I, too, have been distrustful of BT after that indictment.  I have been
very
happy with Follett:  fulfillment is excellent, esp. with non-fiction
titles;
cataloging is the best; and I LOVE Titlewave--it makes my job so much
easier.  My only very minor complaint echoes the LMNET person who didn't
like the placement of the barcodes.  I had specified the back cover near
the
spine.  But they were a good 2-3" from the spine (practically at the middle
of the fiction books) and not in the corner but down the same 2-3"--in
other
words, practically in the middle of many of the back covers.  So now I just
ask for unattached barcodes and I place them myself and they send more than
sufficient barcode label covers--so no problem!
    My only other jobber of choice is BroDart when I have to order Fiction.
They seem to carry more "paperback only" titles than Follett that they will
do a Duralam cover on for a very small additional price so a $4.99
paperback
becomes a $6 hardcover.
____________
I'm about to retire and so I guess I can get away with this! Over the
years, both at elementary and high school, Follett has been, as you said,
faster, more complete and, I might add, with much better cataloguing. I
haven't used B&T for years. They have some very friendly and nice sales
people though (JIC this listserv is being filtered by B&T!). Most of the
public libraries around seem to like Ingram best - maybe because they have
a warehouse in Roseburg, OR.
______________
Kim, I have and do use both. Follett is usually cheaper on the fiction,
B&T for non-fiction. B&T ships much faster it seems. I've nearly lost my
money at the end of the year with Follett, twice. They send you an
acknowledgement but that doesn't mean anything is actually happening with
your order-- just that it's been assigned an invoice number -- there is
even an invoice to go with the number) As someone else mentioned their
turnaround is four to six weeks. I've stopped having the orders processed
( just the marc records disk) since I can enter them quite easily through
my ( Follett) automation system. This speeds up the shipping a little. If
you talk to your Follett rep he can usually get the shipping moved up.The
biggest complaint that I always heard with B&T was that you would have
such a low fill rate- with the new website this is not a concern as it
will tell you how many copies are in inventory so you know if you want to
chance ordering something they only have 2 copies of!  I do a lot of
comparision shoppping so I usually go with the cheaper place. ( You also
need to be careful to look at the copyright date because the cheap price
is sometimes on the older copyright of a revised edition.
__________________
Kimberly, I too much prefer Follett.  When I have ordered from B &T, it
sometimes takes forever, they get things mixed up, and they don't
catalog as well for school purposes.  I used to order from B & T once in
awhile but in the last two years, I haven't at all.  Follett is
wonderful about replacing things that fall apart, etc.  Plus, I think
Titlewave is easier to use.  I can't say enough good things about
them!
________________
I receive better service from Follett than from B&T.  A few years ago I
sent
similar orders to both.  I got a better fill rate with Follett.
__________________
I tried to use B and T but it never worked because we have to do a PO with
our district with the books listed and it didn't work.  I did get a few
books from them but they didn't have a good fill rate.  I love Follett. My
partner is a cataloging guru and loves Follett's processing.  In fourteen
years I've had only 2 very minor problems and they were cleared up with a
simple phone call.
__________________
I am afraid I am not familiar with the fraud issue.  However, I have used
B&T for years and have always been very pleased.  A few times I sent a
list of books to both Follett and B&T for quotations.  I always went with
B&T for 2 reasons .  First, they were able to fill a larger portion of the
order, because Follett is more geared to elementary and middle schools
than they are to high schools.  Secondly, the price was ALWAYS less at
B&T.  The reason for this in my case has to do with how I prefer to order
books.  I prefer trade versions which have a much bigger discount.  If a
book is so popular that it falls apart, I will be happy to spend the $6 it
costs to get it rebound when that happens, rather than spending the money
up front on library bindings for books that turn out to be shelf sitters.
Even when I had elementary students, I never had more than 30 books per
year that needed to be rebound.
___________________

I never had anything but messed up orders and bad customer service from
Baker & Taylor.  Follett rarely makes a mistake, and when they do, they
correct it quickly and professionally.  If Follett costs a little more, it
is worth it!
_________________


We have had few problems with Follett here.  But, Baker Taylor has done
and continues to do a poor job with electronic cataloging that they
provide.  When I was working for a public library, we could never get
consistency in orders processed from BT.  We almost always had to do the
processing (spine labels, barcode placement, etc.) over on at least some
books.
__________________
Were they convicted? If so, that would be reason enough to not use them.
>>I have found that Follett has a far better fill rate and turn-around
>>time.
This should justify using them.
>   What do you think about comparison between the discounts and the
>>service both jobbers provide.
I've never used B&T, so I can't say. I've always used Follett, and have
been very pleased.
_________________________

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