RE: Re: 2005 best year for iSeries in a DECADE

[Al Mac <macwheel99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

IBM is a technology company.  Accounting is not their bag.
When various groups of people have listed things that IBM needs to fix, 
their accounting system is usually in the top 10.
AT+T is even worse when it comes to getting them to do get the billing right.
Basically you cannot do business with these outfits unless you audit every 
single transaction on every single contract.
The smaller the customer, the worse IBM & AT+T are, so I suspect this is 
deliberate.
I wish it were not so, because I like their technology.

I suspect Microsoft is the other way around.
I also suspect some of AT+T competitors are the other way around.
Now that one of the other way around has taken over AT+T, I expect we will 
get the worst of the 2 worlds.

> Further, I like IBM support, most especially hardware support. This is 
> beyond just the price; it includes actual service.
>
> The _MAJOR_ difficulty has always been getting contracts in place and 
> keeping them current. I've been trying since the end of last November to 
> get another 3-year software agreement in place. I spent much of the 
> afternoon on the phone last Friday in my fifth attempt (fifth including 
> being told last December 19th that an invoice should be mailed in January) 
> at getting it going again. So far I still haven't talked to anyone who can 
> actually get it done.
>
> I cannot understand why it can be so hard to give money to IBM.
>
> Tom Liotta