Flying to Hong Kong

Yesterday, I had one of the longest conf calls ever. It wasn't technically long compared to the others that have lasted several hours, but this went on for 45 minutes and it was about a very silly thing. We were arguing that long for a measly HK$ 8,000.

About 3 weeks ago, I bought some server eqipment from a vendor worth US$120,000. As usual, stuff like that went through several rounds of negotiation before we gave the go signal to release the PO. They then sent us a separate quote for services.

Now, I've dealt with server vendors all my professional career, and I've never seen anyone unbunbdle doing at least power on services for something that you buy from them, specially servers. So when they told us that they did, and that now we had to pay them an extra HK$ 8,000 just to unpack the servers, mount it to the rack and plug the cables, my boss and I were like "Excuse me?"

So this conf call was a culmination of a week-long email thread arguing back and forth on this HK$ 8,000 power on service fee, which is roughly about US$ 1,000. The truth is, we wouldn't have really minded paying for this, but by principle, the vendor should have paid for this misunderstanding. The thing that was so elemntary about it and yet so difficult for them to understand is, that we are asking them to give this at least as an investment for the vendor/client relationship that we are building. We are a big fucking regional account! Can't you invest that small amount to show good faith?

And so my boss and I tried to be polite as we could, but eventually the discussion spiraled down when it became apparent that they wouldn't give. And they even said that they would only do that if we committed to get the other services that were worth much more. The nerve! In the end, my boss lost his patience and finally conceded and said we would pay the amount, just to end the bloated discussion and free ourselves from this issue. And then there was a moment of awkward silence. It was probably only 5 seconds, but it seemed a lot longer, specially for their Global Account Manager. Specially when my boss' last words before the silence was "Does that make you happy?"

So now I have to haul my ass to Hong Kong and personally look into this crap. They've since sent an email saying that now they will do it for free, and have asked to meet with me over lunch when I am there on Tuesday. What can I say? Free lunch is free lunch. And I know I'm gonna love doing this lunch specially when these vendors will be grovelling at my feet in hopes of overturning that nasty conf call yesterday. Damn! It feels good to be a client this time.