e-business is a sham

Ok, so I gotta say after 11 years in dotcom I am sick of the bullsh!t IBM commercials and all these people that try and sell you 'customized integrated portals' and other crap for your business. Really, for large corporations there *might* be some use for common directories, address books, schedulers, but they show some f^cking sheep herders with a bunch of guys in suits standing there trying to come across as 'no matter how small your business is, you suck without us' like the sheep will produce more wool because you have a blade center.

Personal experience:
Then these *********** have the audacity to try and convince me that my photography business needs their services. weekly and very weakly. hell i don't upload 90% of my images to the web, i just have a token site for kicks, yet they send me all these invites to seminars and pamphlets. and won't take '**** off *******' for an answer.

some people can't fathom that there is no 'add to cart' function for a specialized service and they built a demo site so that clients, namely magazines, to book a package for me and tried to completey restructure my business in a way they could understand it. it all started out very friendly, then the next thing I know they start telling my employees how to do things.

I charge from 1500/day to 30k/week depending on the client. they try to convince me how they can make my business more efficient with this solution. right. so because they see how much i make, they decide to *maybe* take me to court for the demo site, that I never agreed to and never signed a single piece of paper, OR made any verbal agreement for. I had to make sure security knew that they are not friends of my company any longer and not allowed on the backlot when using my name.

Anybody else find that this hard sell nowadays of e-biz solutions is just overcomplicating very simple traditional tasks?

 

Had the same/similar problem a few years back.

I think a lot of the guys who are doing e-business or web design were simply advertising agencies a few years back who have ramped up their design department.

The hard sell, "I'll design it, you'll love it" that leads to a big bill a month or two later was pretty common from the ad guys in the old days.

I had an agency do exactly that a few years ago. They came in, made a proposal, I signed NOTHING. A month later, they're back, with a laptop, a new website shell, and logos, full dog and pony show along with a $5K bill.

I tossed 'em out. The desings were awful, and unsolicited. The logo was piss poor, overall, they did a lousy job, THAT I NEVER ASKED FOR. And, as I explained to them as they begged me to pay them, "No PO, no check. No contract, no check."

It's never happened since as I now carefully explain up front to these types that if they want to do design work on spec, then, IT'S ON SPEC, AND THEY HAD BETTER PRAY I LOVE IT OR THEY AREN'T GETTING PAID FOR IT.