IBM has an ad in today’s Financial Review for special offers on some of their servers. I’m interested in a new web server, so paid attention. The ad is headed ‘uptime comes standard’.

There are two contact channels, a web address and a 1800 telephone number.  So I go to the web URL. It has a bunch of offers – but they are old ones expiring 31 March. Not the new ones – someone’s not updated with the latest to coincide with the print campaign.

So I ring the 1800 number. It’s answered with the usual canned voice, ‘all our operators are busy please hold’ then it goes click beep, and a voice says ‘there is no voice mail service please contact the main number for this location’ (or somesuch) and hangs up.

So instead I ring the 1800 number (different to above) on the web site. I get a voice mail saying I’ve rung the marketing response centre and pre sales department, please leave a message and they’ll respond within 3 business hours.

IBM’s servers may have uptime as standard, but their marketing and
sales systems just have downtime. Makes it pretty difficult to buy
anything from them….