[wplug] [nycbug-talk] ZFS committed to FreeBSD base. (fwd)

[Michael H. Semcheski]

On 4/7/07, James O'Kane <jo2y at midnightlinux.com> wrote:
>
> This is the part I hated about talking to vendors. We were spec'ing
> air-conditioning units at a previous job, and one of the vendors called to
> see if I want to get lunch. I didn't like the guy's personality, so when I
> declined he started begging. He said if we didn't get lunch, he wouldn't
> get to eat. I've also turned down tickets to sporting events from disk
> array vendor because they weren't something I was interested in.
> Do things like this sway technical people's purchasing decisions?


I don't mind going out to lunch with vendors, because if they want to give
me a sales pitch, they're not going to do it during my regular working
time.  You want some of my time to advance your business, I might be game,
but its going to be a time when I normally wouldn't be doing work, like at
lunch.  Does it sway my decision?  It might.  But I won't let the fact that
someone paid $20 for my lunch influence a $10,000 purchase.

The thing I hate is this.  They give you a quote for some big ticket item.
You shop around a little, and say "well, I can get this other thing from
some other company."  And so they come back and give you a quote that beats
their original price.

So you do a couple of iterations of that, and when its time to buy, you're
thinking "They would have gone lower.  I'm getting ripped off."  And don't
ask me what my budget is.  I had someone ask me what my budget was, and I
told him, and voila, he came in literally a penny under my budget.  I didn't
give him my business out of principle.
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