Barry wrote>

This is an excerpt of an email that was sent to the management of a company that I'm working with. They had spec'ed F85's for a fairly low performance 10-20Mbits/sec. environment. The main requirement is reliability and ease of use. How does one respond to blatant misrepresentation of a competitors product?

I've run into similar situations. I politely and strongly told the messenger who delivered such a message that this marketing tactic is unacceptable. In my most recent incident I told the salesperson that if I ever received such material from them again I would call the Sales VP and require that I work with someone else from their company.

In that incident I never forced the salesperson to admit that he wrote the FUD document that I objected to. He indirectly admitted it, and I've seen nothing similar from him.

The most powerful weapon you have to deal with this is your attention. If you ignore a salesperson and tell his/her management why, they will be dinged for it. Of course, your influence is factored by how much money you have spent in the past with them, and the likely purchase you could make. If all you have to spend is $20K then they can blow you off easily. (I'm not saying this is your case)

Don't get upset over this sign of weakness on the vendors part. It's not worth it. Stupid, small and evil people will always be with us.

-- Quentin Fennessy Quentin.Fennessy@amd.com Office: 512.602.3873 Cell: 512.694.7489