Most Outrageous Vendor Lie Ever Told? 1314
i8msft writes "CIO published a guide on How To Cut Through Vendor Hype. While light, the article did prompt me to wonder what is the most outrageous lie ever told by a vendor? I mean, in person, face to face, preferably with witnesses (boss, coworkers, someone on your side of the fence). Forget press releases, trade show presentations and the like, where they lie like dogs! Specific examples only, please."
Re:We make a secure Operating System (Score:1, Interesting)
Sun ad in Unix Review in the mid 90s
How about... (Score:1, Interesting)
Chain of [Flash] Fools (Score:5, Interesting)
-
if the client wanted to have an up-to-date, respectable website, it must have pull-down menus;
- if they wanted pull-down menus, they must do it in Macromedia Flash; and
- if they wanted Flash to work on their website, they must switch to Cold Fusion Server.
The vendor was a Macromedia shop with over a dozen employees; they are now out of business.Number of users and what users are doing (Score:3, Interesting)
I had to write a special app just to get it to work on terminal server. Running it over a Point to Point T1 line was too slow, so even the folks in customer's biggest remote office (connected via the FULL point-to-point T1) have to use terminal services.
Same company: oh, sure the database is stable. And the ODBC driver works well.
FEH
Can't complain too much - their bugs keeps my company busy and hence well paid.
Dont forget "Real Soon Now" (Score:3, Interesting)
Basic lesson , don't trust them
boy I know what you mean... (Score:3, Interesting)
Figure Athlon into this, and the benchmarks get more interseting. An Athlon 4 1.2 gig rendered a scene in 130 seconds, a Macintosh 867 took 271 seconds. I think both those processors came out about the same time, but that's a big difference, dontcha think?
In any case, I agree with you. Marketing has a way of twisting the numbers to their favor. It's funny how if you narrow a perspective a bit, you seem a lot more favorable.
Licence? since when? (Score:3, Interesting)
Licence agreement says: Any modification of code is prohibited. Use of external code to modify databases created by our program is prohibited.
Remember to send at least 10 copies of that line to the purchaser in the company. It's important they read it prior to signing the million dollar deal. It's your ass on the line, not theirs.
When you try selling something... (Score:1, Interesting)
4/5 years ago a commercial tried to sell to a customer of ours a web site about translation...
You could browse literal works with a browser; on the left frame there should have been the original version and on the right the translated version (the customer had already the transaltions, obviously)
In his opinion the end-user would have been able to click on a word in the left frame of the browser to see the "translated word" highlighted in the right frame..
We stopped him just in time... but it was hard to make him understand that
1) there wasn't the technology to do it (frames were NEW those days)
2) the only way to link a word on the left frame with one on the right was to hire 5.000 people to create links between them (or using AI... that was out of the scope of a simple web site)
3) since they were literary works there was hardly any thing like a "translated word"!!!
(they were REAL translation, not crappy word-by-word translations...)
And he got angry with us because we "ruined" a sure contract
absolute worst lie (Score:1, Interesting)
"Yes, there's money in the payroll account."
So we went to the bank that the checks were drawn on, to cash them directly. Once again, his lie bit him in the ass. That was the last time he told me that lie.
Less than a year later, the loan officer controlling the credit on the store shut it down. Turns out the store owner lied through his teeth about how much business and inventory they had. It was a landmark, almost 100 years old, and now they tore it down and put a bank in its place.
EMC - Best Service Company Ever... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then there's the software support service contract. It took me months to get them to bill us, then they send a bill for $16K, we send it in, then when it's time to place a service call it's "who are you again?". Our $16,000 is missing, no one knows where it is, even though I have a copy of the canceled check they cashed. We are now getting dunning letters demanding payment at the same time getting a cancellation notice on another contract we had with them along with a credit invoice. So now THAT system is up-in-the-air.
They are the most screwed up company I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with. I won't even go into the crap software they use. Their linux fiber HBA drivers use sg version 3.0.16 for lk 2.2. When I tried to update it, everything broke. Turns out, and this was told to me from the driver's author no less, that sg version 3.0 was a development branch only, and that every minor release changed the interface and that EMC had *NO* business putting this crap into production. I ended up getting EMC code out of it (thank god I had source) and folding it into sg rev 3.1x under lk 2.4.
The site engineer I have is the only bright spot in the entire company. He's trying to get my contract issues resolved. It's time critical, because I've heard they are farming out their higher ed contracts to Dell (which actually may be a good thing).
EMC may be good to megacorps that spend 10s of millions a year on their "frames", but if you only spend a half a mil (which we did), from my perspective at least, it seems like they could care less about you...
384k upload! (Score:5, Interesting)
So I call them up, ask them, what's the service, the plan, the billing, etc...
don't worry, its 2.2 mbps down, and 384kbps upload!
Ok, sounds good... sign me up.
well, aside from a quick little problem with the router attaching itself to your mac address,
it turns out that its sharing one road runner account through the whole apartment complex.
I call up tech support "can you tell me why my internet connection sucks so badly?"
re: "because its a sucky connection on sucky routers" (that's what tech support said, at least THEY were being honest).
well, can you fix it?
Sure, let us kick some other people off the network...
eeee!
Right now, I download at about 20-30k, and my upload is around the ballpark of
I can't play CS, because my choke is at 100 and my ping is 2000.
Give me a 36.6k modem! Pleaasseeee...
Compression Algorithm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sun Whoppers (Score:1, Interesting)
but the first and last are flat out wrong. Java is ideal for large systems and servers. Java is also an object oriented language. Whoever says it isnt (including pnatural) deserves to be taken out back for a photo shoot [goatse.cx]
SURFBEST INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER!! (Score:1, Interesting)
While comparing complex Enterprise support... (Score:2, Interesting)
It boggles my mind, but many within my own organization believed these people and I had quite the fight to keep from buying this and then being the one whose job it would be to make it work.
Go figure.
Re:His name was Xenu. (Score:4, Interesting)
See Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot [slashdot.org]. This comment [slashdot.org], also containing the OT III, was removed. I wonder if they'll notice it this time, now it isn't posted in a Co$-related story.
CompUSA (Score:5, Interesting)
You're the only one with this problem.. Your fault (Score:3, Interesting)
A friend of mine was supporting a group of a few hundred Wintendos boxes, and he ran into a problem where Excel was corrupting files on a semi-regular basis. When he took this to his assigned MS support rep, he was repeatedly told (over a number of months) "It must be something that you're doing wrong because I haven't been able to find anybody else with the same problem.
One day he was talking to this rep when my friend mentioned that he was talking to person X at company Y.
"Oh, yeah, he's one of my asignees,' interrupted the rep. "I talk to him all the time."
"Oh," replied my friend rather acusingly, "then you know about the problem that they've been having".
(They had been having the same problem for monthes and had been fed the same line by their [this same] MS rep.).
[guilty silence]
Busted!
And for this 'service' we paid thousands of dollars a year on top of the license fees.
OneBox.com (Score:4, Interesting)
We have concluded our free trial of our Onebox Plus premium service and, due to the acquisition of Onebox.com, we have decided not to offer a paid premium service plan to users of our service. As a thank you for participating in our trial you may keep your Onebox Plus service for free. We have deleted your payment information from our system completely and you will never be charged for the Onebox Plus service.
If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us using the support form in our Help Center.
Thank you for your participation,
The Onebox.com Team
And HERE is the email I just received from OneBox:
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ONEBOX USERS
March 14, 2002
Dear Onebox customer,
Through the years, providing you with a reliable, high quality service has been our primary mission. In order to continue, Onebox will begin charging a nominal fee. If you would like to maintain your Onebox account, we require you choose a messaging package that best fits your needs no later than April 15, 2002. Unfortunately, if we do not receive your selection by this date we will discontinue your account.
If you have an account with Onebox, you will need to register for a paid subscription prior to this date. To subscribe, please click on the following link http://www.onebox.com/service/indexFounder.html . While registering, please update your profile information where necessary. To make the transition easier, your Onebox user name and password will remain the same and all your messages will stay in your account. However, you are required to change your phone number to a new, toll-free number.
Hmmmmm... What part of never didn't they understand? Bastards. I'd willingly pay them money to continue using my voicemail number, but they're not even giving me that option. Despite numerous emails asking about this, they haven't even responded. Bastards.
-Russ
Re:CompUSA (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, this from the same class of salespeople who said "if you hook a DVD player into a VCR, the VCR will probably fry, so you best avoid going through the VCR, or else you mught void the warranty and have to get a new VCR..." The floor salespeople at most retail outlets are so unbeleivably incompetent..
Re:My Vote: (Score:1, Interesting)
"A Macintosh version of Half Life will be available shortly after the PC release."
"A Macintosh version of Tribes 2 will be available shortly after the PC release."
Re:His name was Xenu. (Score:5, Interesting)
Me What's that?
S It's an e-meter. It tells you the state of your health, spirit, etc (I don't actually recall what she said) Do you want to try it?
Me Yes.
S OK, hold it like this...
Me Wow. I can make the meter move pretty much any way I like just by gripping it a little more tightly.
S Don't do that.
Me How do you know people aren't doing that subconsciously?
S You have to let go (or something like that). This was accompanied by a look that told me she knew I was a skeptic, she had dealt with us before, didn't really care, and simply wanted to move on to the next sheep. (it's amazing how much can be communicated with just one look sometimes).
The only other time I've ecountered a Scientologist was downtown. He asked me if I wanted to see a free movie. I figured there would be at least a half hour of propoganda with the movie, and I didn't feel like sitting through that so I declined.
The way I see it, Scientology is to the private sector what the lottery is to the public sector--a way to tax stupidity.
Re:HP 32-bit thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, he was partly sorta right. If your programmers misuse 64-bit data operands where 32-bit data would do just as well, the application is going to waste about half the memory cache space (at all levels), so it _will_ run much slower. 64-bit flat memory is useful, especially for large databases, but programmers still have to understand what they're doing (and what the compiler will do, how that will impact the processor, memory, etc.) or they can build programs that run slower than they did in 32-bits.
See the 64-bit computing faq that's up at AnandTech right now.
i saw this (Score:3, Interesting)
so me, being the copycat i am, i did the same in my local paper... in BIG bold print, i wrote, LAST CHANCE TO SEND YOU $5 TO
i got about $750
Huge Lies in New Zealand (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for the largest ISP in New Zealand - we are strongly associated with the largest Telco (who have a virtual monopoly on landlines)
We have been told to outright lie to customers relating to a number of issues, including
* Dropping port speeds to virtually 0 on a number of P2P applications
* Running out of IP addresses to give to paying DSL customers
* DSL network outages due to extremely poor design - we are not allowed to confirm these until "the word" comes through - even when half the country is without service.
We have to tell these lies every day - I don't think it will suprise anyone to know that Xtra (the ISP) has a content partnership with MSN.
The worst part is - half this stuff gets out in press-releases before we even get told at the helpdesk; and we're still meant to lie to customers even when the info is public!
Despicable if you ask me - I'm leaving as soon as I can.
Re:We make a secure Operating System (Score:2, Interesting)
When I fix something I expect it to _stay_ fixed. But since you had to reinstall NT from scratch every now and then, all my hard work at patching the OS goes down the toilet. So I have to decide between loading the service packs in the right order (if your running IIS) and then loading the hotfixes or getting some sleep.
It's a really shitty product that blames all its problems on its customers.
Don't get me started on this particular piece of FUD from M$. Next you'll be telling me all 3rd party drivers are buggy and security by obscurity is correct, and my network will just work right when we finally go all M$ and wait of course.. the fix for you're current problem is in the next version, and yes we really did need to break the doc, xls, vsd file standards in order for you to pay us more fscking money next year....
Get a fucking clue, you're being lied to by M$ and you believe it.
Pinnacle Micro (Score:2, Interesting)
Back then, systems were meager and expensive. I wanted to connect it to a PS/2 (yeah, one of those boat anchors) via the Adaptec microchannel SCSI card.
Suspicious that the setup might not work, I spoke directly with one of PM's salemen. They were eager to talk, cause the drives were $2000 at the time and blank disks ran $25 from them and about half that from other vendors).
The salesman not only told me that the Adaptec SCSI card was certified to work with the drive, but offered to sell it to me as part of the bundle (with 100% markup on the cost of the card - $400).
After a month of troubleshooting, the umpteenth tech I spoke to on their support line (not an 800 number, and always a 45 to 60 minute wait on hold before they got to my call) told me that "It's the SCSI card - that particular one won't work with the drive". Then, he did some 'research' and told me of a BusLogic microchannel card that would work.
So I bought the BusLogic card.
The thing was still a $2000 coaster making toaster.
So, over the course of 12 more tech support calls (each with an hour on hold), I finally get escalated up to their head techie, who informs me "That drive doesn't work with any microchannel SCSI card! I don't know where you got the idea it would...." I gave him the names of the salesman who specified the Adaptec card and the tech who specified the BusLogic.
I finally got the drive working by saving up for many months and buying another (non-microchannel) system ($2500+ more down the drain) to use with the RCD-1000.
8 months later, the RCD-1000 burnt itself up, and PM wanted to charge me $460 to fix it. They said it was *just* out of warranty. Nevermind the months and months of downtime I had because they had outright lied to me.
THAT is the reason I will never, ever, again buy or recommend any of their products.
Re:Local tech support (Score:1, Interesting)
It's a SCSI card for an Apple II made by CV Technologies in the late 80s, and it has a ROM which contains the drivers. When you install the card the rom appears a disk image and you can copy the files from it and run the configuration utility. Clever.
Consumer Advocacy (Score:1, Interesting)
Vote Nader! Vote consumer advocacy!
Re:His name was Xenu. (Score:2, Interesting)
Wanting to see how the green may have affected our intelligence we went to the address to find it was a tiny Church of Scientology hidden away on the third floor of a building that looked condemned. We were greeted and sat down to two tests - an multiple choice IQ test and a timed aptitude test. After completing a drone told us that while the tests were being marked we can watch a film about their organisation. Wanting to get a good look at the religion, I did not hesistate to sit through it. A well-produced piece of propaganda followed. It featured some actor I had never heard of extolling the virtues of finding inner peace and enlightenment through "auditing", and also served to advertise the Scientology meditation retreats (the church owns a large cruise ship, and many hotels). After viewing the film we were presented with the results, both of which were around 140 for the IQ. The IQ results had lines indicating current ability, and the ability levels 1 month and 1 year after joining, projecting 150 and 180 respectively.
To me this seemed like absolute BS.
They then started the hard sell, personal testimonies and all. I remember freaking out that these people had so much faith in the fictional construct of a long deceased sci-fi author.
All we could do was to refuse several times the offer to buy some literature (we asked for it for free; denied) and headed out of there.
It was a pretty funny afternoon.
- Scipher
Oracle: Unbreakable?! (Score:2, Interesting)
Y2K! (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm so proud the be a tech specialist at moments like that.
From a former sales engineer. (Score:2, Interesting)
It used to be that they hired engineers to sell the product, spent months training them on the software making you actually learn how to use the software so you could sell it (thereby giving you more credability). Eventually they switched over to more salesly types who totally depended on applications engineering support staff to answer any technical questions. These guys would promise the moon and some of them were quite successful without any real understanding of what the software did or how it worked. On the otherhand, sales engineers like myself were more likely to flat out tell you if you actually could use or need our product other than wasting your time on it.
What I would find amusing some times about the job was that when you would give a presentation that there was always one guy in the audience who wanted to be a jackass and ask stupid questions or attempt to make you(the sales engineer) look stupid, it was always funny to give him the correct answer to shut him up as the guy usually never realised that you were a real engineer at one point in your life. Kind of reminds me of the dilbert comic where he talks about abusing sales people as it is the one thing he can do in his life where its ok to be rude and demeaning to people(some sales people desirve it).
On a side note, the reason salespeople act the way they do for the most part is because it works. I always treated everyone with respect, but the salesguy constantly calls you once you express interest to force you to move on it else you forget or get distracted with something else (in sales your job is always on the line, sales is usually the first staff to get cut when times start to go bad).
If you wan't to get the real deal on anything, go speak with the applications engineer who supports the sales staff, they will usually give you an idea of the true capabilities of the product. Never trust the marketing guy, he will stretch the truth far more than the sales staff.
Lastly, if you are an engineer who can write and talk well and likes working with people, try sales or applications engineering at somepoint in your career. The money is VERY good. Besides you can always go back to your old job.
The Lies of Dell Corporate (Score:2, Interesting)
Those lying jerks - why couldn't they just tell me there was a driver problem, and I could download the fixed drivers? WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Winmodems (Score:2, Interesting)
Another good one is, when trying to order a PC without a MicroSlop OS pre-installed: "It's illegal to sell you one like that." And last but not least this is my favorite lie: "Windows is the most stable and secure OS, so why would you want a blank HD?"
Oracle asks: teach my reps to lie (Score:2, Interesting)
I sent Oracle almost all of the money I'd saved to start the business. My delighted rep then asked me to speak to the Oracle quarterly meeting of top sales reps to help them get to know the small dot-com customers. He wanted his colleagues to be able to help other startups like he'd helped me. I was hoping to become an Oracle PosterGrrl -- and thus attract investors, partners, and customers.
I spent a couple days preparing a talk, flew to Boston, and told 400 reps and managers about my company and why I'd chosen Oracle's iStore. My favorite slide was one showing a bungalow and a half -- because I had just written Oracle a check worth 150% of my first house. And I had gotten a mortgage to pay for the house!
As I talked, I could see some of those shining faces showing more and more concern. Afterwards, an Oracle consulting rep told me I'd really need his team's help because no one had EVER installed the package they'd sold me without extensive help from their consulting branch. He estimated I needed another $100K. I had less than $10K left.
I flew home with the stunned feeling that Oracle had taken my money with the knowledge that this act would immediately drive me out of business.
A few weeks later, the prices did go up and the package I had bought completely disappeared from their website. Oracle wouldn't refund my money or apply it to other purchases when it became obvious I couldn't use iStore. And the last I'd heard, my accountant was still trying to get them to reimburse me for my hotel and meal expenses as promised. I wound up selling my company to get enough funding to continue.
So Larry Ellison, please feel free to send me a check for $62,259. And the rest of you, don't make the mistake I did in thinking that Oracle wants to help you grow so they can profit from a long-term relationship. They just want to devour your seed corn.
Re:Huge Lies in New Zealand (Score:2, Interesting)
1) The dropping of port speeds is now a well known issue, but this isn't just port blocking, its also combined with the sheer number of users taking up the bandwidth on Xtra Jetstart, which then results in the low speeds (especially o'seas connections).
2) As far as I've seen, they're pretty quick to fix the "running out of IP addresses" issue. Of course it should never happen in the first place
3) The DSL network outages are nothing to do with Xtra, they are purely Telecom issues. With exchange upgrades, firmware upgrades, phone line maintenance etc etc, there is no way you could expect Telecom to offer 100% service time.
(They don't even OFFER 100% service
However, Xtra does still have to "fob customers off" by referring them to Telecom, or back to their DSL modem vendors etc. The helpdesk technicians try
The Xtra helpdesk takes literally thousands of calls a day (not even counting email communication). They are a production line created to churn through the calls as quickly, efficiently, and effectively as possible. Its a sad thing that complete open honesty to customers, and time to spend on calls with customers appear to have flown out the window.
I was happy to leave the helpdesk, and was sad to see so many people having to stay there. I sincerely hope their working conditions improve dramatically in time to come!!