

Richard J. Hughes rhughes at
Tue Mar 30 19:33:21 EST 1993

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 

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.


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