In my 25 year career, I have never had to deal with such a garbage software vendor as this one. I don’t want to go on a rant since I have other things to do today and could go on for hours, but here are the highlights:
- Application has like 30 modules. Each module has its own config file.
- Config files are not centralized and reside in the directory with each module.
- Vendor ships a zip file of slop code that requires manual assembly.
- Vendor provides no substantial documentation. Every request for technical documentation is met with “Let’s setup a meeting to solve your immediate problem”.
- Vendor ships dummy config files in every release necessitating manual backup/restore of the config for each of the 30 modules
- Vendor changes config file format every third release. This requires re-configuring the entire application stack and all 30 modules.
- Vendor puts the version info in the goddamned config file instead of building it into the compiled .NET application as a variable like a sane person would do.
- Vendor sends an update every week and gets pissy when we don’t deploy it within 3 hours of their “we shat out an update” email.
- Vendor has been asked repeatedly to address this. The only response we’ve gotten to these complaints is the sound of crickets chirping. 🦗
To answer any questions:
- Yes, I voiced my concerns long ago. They were ignored.
- Yes, they are the “lowest bidder” and it goddamned shows.
- Yes, they know I hate them.
- Yes, I tried writing scripts to manage the config files. They work once or twice until the vendor changes the config file format every 3rd-4th release.
- Yes, it is sunk cost fallacy all the way down, but I’ve been given my orders.
I once had the opportunity to work on a contract with not the lowest bidder, and nowhere near the top either. Requirements meetings where you don’t need to repeat every basic point, not great but actual technical docs matching the system and not an earlier iteration, delivery with warranty support with the same folks and not some new hire, etc. It was years ago and I still think about that project sometimes.
God damn, you should have put a ring in that vendors finger
I now pronounce you, vendor and client
organ music plays
Now that we’re married, we’re doing RIF and outsourcing our IT staff to India. Have fun!
Know one? I work for a multibillion dollar one.
There they are!!
Get 'em OP! Before they make another release
“Make the following changes after installing the application.”
I just ran your installer with administrator privileges. Why the hell is there anything for me to do after that?
“After uninstalling, do the following to remove all traces of the application.”
Seriously, again with this?
“Install and run our uninstall utility” is also equally frustrating and common lol.
GE PACS RA1000 client uninstall.
You could select it in the control panel and choose “uninstall”, and it would uninstall…but then it would immediately reinstall itself.
I eventually figured out which prompt it was that you had to cancel to prevent it from reinstalling.
- Non-IT group bought very expensive application.
- Contracted with 3rd party to maintain app/infrastructure (also STUPID EXPENSIVE)
- 6 months of planning between purchasers, app vendor, and contractors
- 6 months of rolling out/installing/configuring application
- realize infrastructure is already obsolete and cloud vendor is about to remove support for it. Updates required ASAP
- Vendor and contractors are not able to complete updates
- Expect me to fix everything for them (despite not being involve in any of the above)
- Contract not voided (they are still getting paid) despite me needed to solve all the problems
Yep, been there. Thankfully that particular boondoggle fizzled out at the “Expect me to fix everything for them (despite not being involve in any of the above)” step because I refused. Normally me refusing wouldn’t fly, but vendor’s instructions required configuring Remote Desktop Services in a way that clearly and blatantly violated Microsoft’s licensing terms and non-IT group did not want to pay for the requisite number of license seats and vendor insisted you did not need RDS licenses for this scenario (spoiler: you totally do).
I think the non-IT group still has a contract with [shitty robotic process automation vendor], though, but we just washed our hands of it and the non-IT group uses their cloud version.
I’ve debated reporting that company to Microsoft for license violations because I just hate them (I have their deployment instructions and emails as proof) but I’ve just stopped caring and am not quite petty enough to do so lol.
Oof lol
I’m sorry OP, I know your pain.
I used to have to work with a vendor who sent all our records in CSV form, usually weekly, and each week had different column headers and formats (date formats changed each week, decimal precision, numbers as text, numbers as dates, etc). Like they had a different manual extract process each week, which required us to manually reconcile each week.
I currently have to work with a large vendor and I hate them. The other day I went to open a ticket for an issue, then I saw they already had one. I read the ticket, it was my own ticket from a year ago, with zero responses and a “triage” label applied.
All of my tickets I’ve ever made are still open, and a few just have comments saying they’ll investigate or pointing me at the docs, which are wrong. Never a follow up.
I keep telling my boss we need to dump them, we spend more in salary dealing with their shit than the competition costs. Hell, I could build this in house in a month, but I don’t have time for that.
oh, you mean the “some IT professional designed this non-IT industry-specific software and doesn’t understand why information needs to flow the way it does, causing the software to work wrong” trap?
how about the “we always drop product updates on Friday because we know you don’t want to work weekends” trap
Its okay to name and shame these products and vendors - they’re not listening to their customers so maybe the court of public opinion will work?
Doing so would effectively doxx the org I work for and, by association, me, so no name and shaming this time. They’re not a big player you’d recognize, anyway, and mostly deal with specialty/niche software.
Sounds like healthcare to me!
I noticed someone else mentioning their PACS client which was funny. I haven’t dealt with GEs one but care stream/Philips sucks
Not healthcare (thank gods!) but equally esoteric as far as acquiring line-of-business software goes.
See also:
Customer: we want your product/service but without *important component* and instead with *custom feature*
Sales guy: yeah sure that’s no problem
Then tech is is given a week to make it just barely work with duct tape and prayers
To be fair, it can be wicked tough to package things properly. Especially when said software is a spaghetti-code mess.
I once spent 8 months onsite at a client reverse-engineering our own damned software so I could make our agent function in Solaris native packaging instead of the script+binary we had been using. IIRC, their security team refused to let an agent on their network without us using native packaging.
Hey, I got worse with some freaking expensive vendor. And because the ones who decided to go this path in opposition to everybody who knew better won’t accept the mistake, they sold it as a massive success to leadership, which puts pressure on us because “they are making our life’s easier”.
Zoho
Company with a dozen different bespoke testing environments constantly telling me this.
