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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. _________________________ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=- All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. 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