Sir - I recently tried to renew our subscription to US Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness directives bi-weekly supplements, and noticed that the FAA has farmed this service out to the US Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents.
After submitting the order, with the required payment, the bi-weekly supplements stopped, without warning. I telephoned the Government Printing Office. The relevant department said that we were "-not on our records as having paid". They then denied that we were even on the mailing list, despite having cashed our cheque.
I followed up my telephone call with a fax message, which was ignored. Finally, I telephoned the FAA's public-relations department, who made sympathetic noises, but this did not get us our supplements.
In desperation, I have re-ordered and left our legal department to sort out the problem of the double payment.
It is disturbing that the FAA appears to be happy to leave control of an important service of this nature to a department, which clearly has a remarkably casual approach to airworthiness and is inflexible and unhelpful.
S E YEOMANS
Whittlesford, Cambridge, UK
Source: Flight International