I've been wondering whether to blog about this or not, but I finally decided that they obviously don't notice anything I do, anyway – so it won't hurt anything to go ahead and talk about them.

They make me totally crazy! They call me – sometimes twice a month – and beg me to buy something else through them.

However – when I try to log on and – surprise – buy something, I find they have locked my account because I haven't logged on for too long. AAAAaaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Recently we sold a network – SBS and 7 desktops (Vista and Office 2007) with Software Assurance – a $7,500 deal for just the software. We went to Ingram Micro (after resetting our password – AGAIN), and went to "Click to License". We filled out the information, and indicated that we would like to be billed. I assumed that I would receive an Invoice by return e-mail, and I would put a check in the mail, and everything would be hunky-dorry. When a week had gone by and we hadn't received the media (or anything else) we called them, and after navigating through several phone trees – ending up in India with "I will transfer you to someone who knows (back in Dallas or Chicago or wherever)" – we found out that our order was just sitting in limbo waiting for a credit card. Now I didn't put it on my credit card in the first place because I didn't want to pay a bunch of interest. I have the cash available and would really like to just write a check – or buy a cashier's check – or carry cash to the warehouse. But, NO. Ingram Micro doesn't accept checks, or cash. I'm not real sure why it's more economical for them to take a credit card (which costs them 2-5%) than to take a check (which they could certainly cash, and then wait to clear before they sent the software).

This also begs the question of why they didn't bother to let us know that the order was sitting in limbo. They certainly have my phone number (at least Sales has my number). They have our e-mail address (that's our log-on). They have a snail-mail address (to send the media to). Why couldn't they have contacted me to let me know there was a problem?

I guess I just have to realize that – while $7,500 is a lot of money to me – it's nothing to them.

They obviously don't want to have folks like us as customers – they want the big guys. We'll just take our business elsewhere.