Does Your Vendor Issue Gag Orders?

Presto Vivace writes to tell us that CIO has an interesting article about customer "gag orders" that some ERP vendors are trying to impose contractually. "The effect: customers will be prevented from working with peers and others in the software company's "ecosystem" to help with technical issues or compare pricing options. 'In addition,' Wang adds, 'the customer now lacks the proper checks and balances in pressuring a vendor to deliver on promised capabilities or address severe security issues, and cannot go to the media as a last resort, if needed.'" What other questionable practices (and potential solutions) have others had to work with?

Comments

A different approach...

[penguinstorm]

My ERP vendor takes an entirely different strategy of providing miserable tech support, denying the existence of obvious bugs, claiming the the 1960s technology on the back end is better than modern day RDMS, and having their tech support staff focus on minute tiny details that aren't relevant to the problem whenever you ask them for a solution.

I'd switch ERPs in a heartbeat, if the economy would recover.

Re:Let them sue

[phantomlord]

Buying that candy bar with your credit card likely cost the merchant money. There's a base transaction fee (75 cents at the place I managed), a purchase percentage fee (Master/Visa was 2%, Discover 3% and AmEx 5%) that they keep, a card rejection fee (swipe an expired card and you just cost them another 25 cents to tell you it was expired), etc.

So, at best, your $1 candy bar cost the merchant 77-80 cents in just transaction fees, in addition to the 50 cents or so they paid to actually purchase the bar for you to buy... In other words, he just lose about 30 cents to sell it to you... In addition to that, there are fees just to check your balance for the day, fees to request a payment from your processor, etc. Debit cards are slightly cheaper to process, but overall, the break even point for the restaurant I used to manage was about $5 per transaction. Guess what we set the minimum transaction at?

We only started taking cards because so many people don't carry cash these days, so we were turning customers away. Most are quite understanding about the minimum transaction once we explain why we have it. We do make exceptions for regulars or if someone just bought $30 worth of food and forgot to order some fries or something. You might not like it, however, we can't stay in business long if we're losing money on every transaction, so where are you going to buy your candy bar from then, your high horse?