I was speaking to one of my clerk friends the other day who reminded me to make sure I cash in my Westlaw and Lexis points before they expire since someone in our school lost 30,000 points last year because he thought they expired in August. Since I already have "cashed out," so to speak, I'm in the clear, but it did remind me of this rather annoying tale from last month.
I think I've made it clear over the past year how silly both Westlaw's and Lexis's attempts at stealing market share from unwitting students are, but think that Westlaw is the superior system and marketing tactic, although from a business perspective, neither is that great a company.
Regardless, I was trying to cash in what few points I have left on Lexis and figure that I am 100 points short of getting whatever the cheapest thing is on their limited gift menu, a $10 gift certificate or something like that. 100 points is the equivalent of about a dollar give or take a few pennies.
Around the same time, I similarly fell short of points on Westlaw, and my Westlaw rep graciously donated the requisite points and I was able to get whatever trinket I was trying for. Good for them. My identical request to Lexis came back with an email along these lines - "sorry, I'm unable to give any points since the semester is over." That's it. Nothing more, no good luck, nothing. I'm surprised they hire such incompetents. While I am a bit shocked, I am not surprised given the shoddy treatment our Lexis rep has given the few who actually have any interest in actually learning their system over the past three years. It's too bad that File & Serve has such a grip on lawyers, or else I would never use Lexis. Just Google and Westlaw.
Given that the value of 100 points is so minuscule, I am surprised they couldn't just award me the points. Not that I am entitled to them; frankly, I could care less. I supposed I could have answered five more fact or fiction questions right. It's just the principle of the whole thing. Are they that hard up for the $1 or so these points are worth? It's not like their product line is that great anyway.... I wonder if anyone else has had similar poor customer service encounters with Lexis?
Friday, June 22, 2007
Why I am never using Lexis again
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3 comments:
Sorry about that. Some reps run out of points and aren't as tactful as you'd like when explaining that. If you send me an e-mail, i can get you a few points to round out your law school career. It hate to see it end on such a sour note. But it does have to be before June 30th or even I can't award them.
eric.knustrom@lexisnexis.com
As I said, this happened a while back now and I was able to shuffle things around and it worked out just as well. Thank you for your note though - it does tend to show that my experience with Lexis has been more of an anomaly than anything else.
If you think using their products is bad, try working for them.
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