Once upon a time, legal publishers made their money by selling books. That all changed when databases became everyone's preferred means of accessing information, but publishers were loath to let go of that print-based income. This sometimes led to innovative marketing techniques among some publishing firms. What follows is my response to an unsolicited delivery from one of these.
Fortunately, I have not seen this sort of nonsense in several years. Let's hope letters like this aren't needed again.
8 June, 2009
Dear Customer Service Department,
Please refer your marketing staff to the following website,
which describes the approved vendor practices of the American Association of
Law Librarians (which comprises your primary market):
Principle 3: Fair Dealing.
Publishers should engage in fair dealings with their customers.
3.1 Customer consent. Publishers
should obtain the customer's consent prior to making a shipment or initiating a
transaction, unless such shipment is part of a standing order or subscription
to which the customer has previously consented.
3.1 PRACTICE TO AVOID 1: Without
prior customer consent, a publisher mass mails a new product to customers who
have previously purchased an existing product.
3.1 PRACTICE TO AVOID 2: Without
prior customer consent, a publisher ships a free unsolicited newsletter to a
customer and then later sends an invoice for the title to the customer.
3.1(a) Where the content of a new
product or supplement that is published as part of an existing subscription or
standing order bears no direct relationship to the content of the standing
order or represents a substantial expansion of the topic or purpose of the
original subscription or product, the publisher should seek customer consent
prior to shipment.
3.1(a) PRACTICE TO AVOID: Without
prior customer consent, the publisher of a subscription service ships to
subscribers of the service a pamphlet that includes content that has not
previously been supplied as part of the subscription, where that content is not
specific or closely related to the topic of the service, and charges customers
for the pamphlet.
3.1(b) Where a new product or
supplement is published as an addition to more than one existing title or
subscription, the publisher should seek customer consent prior to shipment.
We are returning the unsolicited supplement received 5 May 2009 for the following
reasons:
1) Said item is
deceptively packaged as part of a series--a subscription service. Such materials are assumed by the customer to
be part of the service for which we have already paid.
2) Said item
does not list a price, anywhere. In
fact, the packing slip--like all other subscription updates--indicates Total:
$***** . This is also deceptive, as the
statement 'Invoiced Separately' again echoes other subscription updates--which
are, of course, invoiced upon subscription, rather than when the updates are
supplied.
3) Said item is
shipped in brown paper. All documents
except the deceptive packing slip described in 2) are packaged INSIDE this
brown paper. These documents, then,
instruct that if item is to be returned, it must be shipped in the packaging
which was NECESSARILY DESTROYED in locating the documents. If not deceptive, this is certainly disingenuous. We are of course ignoring your request to
return the item in its original packaging.
While this shipment may not violate the letter of the
American Association of Law Librarian's vendor guidelines (though I would argue
that it most certainly does), it is clearly an effort to SELL an item for which
no real market exists by making it seem like part of a series for which we have
already paid, not providing the price of the material, and then making its
return more difficult than paying for the unwanted item.
Such vendor practices are entirely unethical. If one must resort to deception to sell one's
wares, one ought leave that business immediately.
Sincerely,
Everett
Wiggins
Reference Librarian
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