As for failing to see that lack of pricing structure is indicative of immaturity in a sales organization I can only assume that that lack of sight comes from the fact that you either have little experience with enterprise and OEM purchasing or have never been in charge of contract negotiations, a inflexible vendor can be soul sucking. Negotiation is a big part of volume purchasing and flexibility in pricing structures is mandatory when dealing with such if there is any hope of creating a long term and mutually beneficial arrangement.

To spell it out, a organization that treated a one off request for a discount due to non-conventional circumstances is a company that shows attention to detail, and a willingness to work with even the smallest purchaser to make them happy. If I told him hey I have 75K would he have responded differently? sure he would have, but where is his breaking point when will he decide that it is not worth supporting me due to the money being in the rear-view. Conversely a guy that supports even the smallest customer is going to treat a volume purchaser very well. Judging by this particular vendors response, I saved myself years of headaches by making a small simple request and I am glad I did.

It is even more important when you deal with a small development house, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen large companies held hostage by a small vendor due to lack of maturity in their sales and customer support process. Ensuring that a potential vendor is not one of those shops is imperative to the happiness of my client and is therefore good business on my end. Vendors are free to have as crappy of sales and support organizations as they see fit, but when it comes to my organization I bend over backwards to make my clients happy and I chose vendors that align with that core philosophy.

This particular vendor was within his right to not give me a discount, I hold nothing against him and I don't hold him account for it but I am also within my right to see that as a sign of lack of maturity in his organization and take my purchasing elsewhere. The purchase reflects on the solution that I was providing for my client, and my ability to support the solution is only as strong as the weakest vendors support. I'm not betting my companies reputation on a vendor that can't even put together non-commercial or educational licensing packages much less an OEM arrangement.

Don't blame him for using the word "lie" when you clearly phrased it like lying:

> Funny story, I was evaluating some screen capture software for OSX not too long ago for a client of mine. I was building a web app for them and part of the work flow for their content was screen capture. Anyway, I emailed a company that had a reputable product and basically told them that I had no need for the pro version, would not be using the pro version for any commercial work but that I would like to use the pro version to teach my daughter about video editing. I then asked if they would consider selling me the pro version at the basic software packages rate. I framed the story in this fashion for several reasons.

basically told them

I framed the story in this fashion for several reasons

I framed the story, is not an admission of lying there where motives beyond the initial purchase, but even if those motives did not exist I intended to purchase software for my daughter, only using a selective portion of my total intent to purchase was in no way lying and in no way disingenuous. I blame him for using the word lie because it is a charged word, that should not be used unless you are certain of the factualness of ones allegations. Calling someone a liar is pretty disingenuous and was done so in this case as a character attack to further his position in his rebuttal. Not as a legitimate response to a legitimate comment.

If you wanted a volume discount, why not ask for a volume discount?

The discount was of no consequence, I was more concerned with their ability to go above and beyond the call of duty. As I have said at multiple points they where free to say no, and well within their right. I hold nothing against them. That being said, if I had seen a good support procedure for an non-standard request, I may have selected them even if they where unwilling to negotiate on price.

For me personally and my organization we go above the call of duty, it is one of our signature marks. So when we are going to by proxy vend another developers product we look for the same. The reason I chose to approach it in the manner I did was due to the fact that I did not have a personal relationship with a developer that provides this type of solution and had no one in my network that did. That coupled with the fact that I personally was looking for a similar solution gave me the opportunity to do so. I don't think my approach was illogical but it was based on a certain level of intuition, something that I freely admitted to in another reply.

I don't think your bellwether test is that good of a test. I know lots of people who turn down educational requests when not from schools out of hand.

Truth be told it was never intentionally a test. Both teaching my daughter and the volume license coincided. It may be that when the idea for the solution we where to provide was pitch I though hey it would be good to tech my daughter video editing. But I don't remember if that is where that spark started or not. Anyway, point is both occurred in the same time frame so I shopped the educational requirement first. I did however go into it with intention of establishing a rapport with a developer that could vend the second requirement.

I think this is the first time in the thread that it came out that you actually have a daughter and were actually considering teaching her with the software. In your first telling, it sounded (to me, and I think to others) like this was entirely made up for the purpose of testing the vendor's response. So it was puzzling that you objected so vehemently to it being called a "lie". Re-reading it now, though, I don't see what part of your comment made me think that (though it's not an obviously wrong interpretation either); maybe it was the influence of other comments.

That being said, I can see where the post could be construed that it was not the true reason for the initial contact. I still think there is enough ambiguity that I should have been given the benefit of the doubt.

Asserting that you gained any real insight into their business acumen or their suitability for your real purchasing needs with your strange test seems deeply misguided. And your delivery makes it entirely understandable if people take away from your post a reading that you are simply self-satisfied at having wielded that purchasing power so capriciously.

Now, after some initial rounds of criticism (and the consequent derail of much of this thread), you've stooped to repeatedly decrying the decline of HN and its devolution into slashdot (although you are apparently finding posts that agree with you to be restorative of hope on that front).

I have stated on several occasions that the flexibility that I was looking for was customer service in the sales process. I also clarified that it was the tone of the developers response served as a red flag to me, the discount was of ill consequence.

Now, after some initial rounds of criticism (and the consequent derail of much of this thread), you've stooped to repeatedly decrying the decline of HN and its devolution into slashdot (although you are apparently finding posts that agree with you to be restorative of hope on that front).

I chose HN after a long stay out of all communities because I did not like the direction that most have them had taken. If you review my post history, you will find it evident that I do not make personal attacks and when I respond to someone, I try to to show them that I value their comment by providing what I think is a well thought out response.

Given my history of finding most sites pointless due to the noise to value ratio and what I feel is an investment of my time to help contribute to HN to make it what it's stated goals are, I do find it disheartening when a comment, that, if you take away the emotion, is totally devoid of value and whos only purpose was to serve as character assassination.

I mean can you honestly look at the post I complained about and defend it as being anything other than a pop shot. One thing I can say for sure, is that no matter my position on a subject, I would not support such a post. I have seen the trend other complain about, and have tried to deny it, make excused for it and ignore it.

So with it so evident in that post I decided to confront it, because I really do want to know if, when critically analyzed, do the members of HN support that kind of regard for other members, that offer a genuine post (whether you agree with it or not, my intent was to contribute to HN).

So given that I feel that I contribute value to HN, I want to know if this is how people that contribute are valued. Because if the answer is yes, then it is time for me to go.

I realized when I posted it, that it would most likely come off as that I am just sour about my message not being received, and people are free to infer what they will about my complaining about it, but if you take away the bias of my original post, go back and read that post, I think you will find it clearly evident that there was little regard for the contribution of a member and an intent to aggravate and malign for having a different view point that the majority.

I asked and would love an answer to is this now acceptable by the majority of HN. Obviously for my continuing to post, I do not believe it is, but the seed of doubt has been planted by other members that I respect so with an example of it so obvious, I felt compelled to not only highlight it but to confront the issue head on.

Right you did not, that was mentioned in another post you did however say that "how stupid of them to not give me a discount" so I carried over the outsmarted perception because they where similar. If it appeared that I put words in your mouth I apologize it was not my intent.

Whether that's their fault or not, you might want to consider changing your writing to avoid this

Point taken, I am well aware of the fact that I did not communicate the story well, that or I see the world different from other developer in either case. I think this thread chain serves as evidence to that fact. It is not in dispute.

Not that it amounts to a hill of beans, but it was already a long post, I trimmed it to shorten it, I think in doing so, I omitted some important details. Further I tried very hard to not inject the developers response, because I did not want to bias the intent of my post with charged rhetoric, I also omitted that I ended up paying full price to the alternate, which I think further slanted the perception that my decision was based merely on not getting my way for a non-standard request.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Unfortunately, it's very hard to discover how much minor decisions like this cost you.

It cost me nothing, I went with a secondary vendor that I was comfortable with. They have been great, the client is in talks with them about an acquisition so that they can provide the full stack from one organization. I lost nothing by eliminating a vendor that I was not comfortable with, while I stood the chance to loose a good deal of reputation by doing so.

http://despair.com/acquisition.html

Did you try to get bids from both company's?

Did you varify that they where in fact idential pieces of software?

Yes, they did not give me the discount, but explained why they where unable to and pointed me to an evaluation version that was full featured but had a save limitation.

Did you try to get bids from both company's?

No

Did you varify that they where in fact idential pieces of software?

Both had the requisite functionality.

Now, there are any number of reasons not to try and get bids from another company. So the next assumption that the other companies more positive response changed your actions is really based on two assumptions, there was a more positive response and the new assumption that it caused you to respond differently... and so it goes until I can build towers of logic from a series of assumptions.

Which finally gets back to my point. You don’t seem to be propagating uncertainty when you describe your thinking. Without comparing both company's responses to your bids we don't have any new information about your assumptions, thus confirmation bias.

The second response was, paraphrased: While we understand the needs of educational software, we cannot offer educational discounts for non accredited educational use. The video codecs that we use require us to pay licensing fees for each seat sold unless that seat is used for accredited educational use. I am really sorry but please see our position, when developers salaries are added in we will eat the cost of those codecs if we sold the software at our educational price.

To spell it out even more slowly than other people have above, developers who do one-offs with discounts are developers whose companies go out of business. It's not profitable and not scaleable. It's not a lack of maturity, it's maturity.

If you are worried about your clients, then write a contract with vendors that specify an SLA for support requests. For enough money they should be happy to do this and it's a very reasonable request.