new shipping routine at Bloomington

[Kathy Matthews]

We have made some changes in the way we process the weekly stock
request that could affect the speed with which you receive stocks
and your annual user fees.  BUN holders should have already
received this message by e-mail.  No additional information is
included here.  This is posted for the benefit of group members
who do not receive our direct e-mailings. 

The number of stocks requested from Bloomington each week has
gotten too large for us to handle at one go.  Over the last 6
months we have shipped an average of 719 subcultures in 64
shipments each week.  5:00 PM EST on Wednesday remains the
deadline for the weekly order cycle, but we will now process
requests, subculture, and ship in two or more batches through the
week to better distribute our work load and minimize the time
between establishing subcultures and getting them into the mail. 
No one will wait longer for stocks, but about half of the
requests will be shipped sooner than under the old system.  The
points for you to be aware of:

1.  You can improve your odds of being in the early group by
ordering early in the cycle and by consolidating all requests
using your group's BUN into one order.  If our recent experience
with your BUN shows that additional requests are likely to be
received within the weekly cycle your request will be held for
the last shipment of the week so that all requests can be shipped
in one package.  

2.  If you are trying to stay under the shipment maximums for
either the 'minimal use' (4 shipments per year) or 'moderate use'
(12 shipments per year) fee categories you can no longer assume
that multiple requests placed within the same weekly cycle will
automatically result in a single shipment.  To assure a minimal
number of shipments each year no more than one request with your
group's BUN should be placed in a given week.