[Froedlich]

I periodically hit pages where I can't tell what a vendor's product does. Or I already know what it does, but it's so full of buzzwords, trademarked terminology, and bafflegab I'm lost. VMWare's web site was a good example of that, last I bothered to look at it.

If a product is promoted as a "solution", that normally indicates it's over-priced, under-featured and not worth looking at further.

There are still a few companies out there so proud of their products they not only don't want to post the price of their products, they want us to pay a consultation fee so they can "craft" a "solution" for us. Uh, no. We're not a Fortune 100 company or a state agency; if you won't tell us at least a ballpark price up front, you're simply wasting our time.

Final fail: companies that only give you a bare outline of what their product does, but fail to tell you important details. You're supposed to leave voicemail for one of their salesmen, who will call you at his convenience to give you the hard sell. No. I'm the guy with the purchase authorization; you dance to my tune.

[Awelton]

I also went through the "no price" dance when I went shopping for a new program for my company. Every website for the dozen or so companies that made software for it had no pricing, a webform to fill out so a salesman can get back with you, and a free trial that said salesman was supposed to email a key for. I tried to get a trial for all of them and got one email from a salesman that referred me back to the website for a trial key. When I told him the website wouldn't give a key and that it specifically stated that the salesman would contact me with it he promptly stopped responding. So much for "Providing modern solutions for confabuable womperdinks in a global world" or whatever the buzzwords were. Apparently if you aren't a multinational company that they can make bespoke software and group training bucks off of they aren't interested.

[pastram_i]

The funny part is, VMWares site is what sparked this conversation when I heard an ad on their VMWare Cloud service, and went to their site to see what it was about.

To this day I have zero idea.

[pastram_i]

Those last two, I pretty much avoid at all cost.