[levemi]

Microsoft is a huge organization with tens of thousands of employees. We have no idea what was communicated between this commenter and the sales person. At some point you have to kind of step back and realize that you're responsible for your outcomes and not blame everything bad that happens to you on others. Searching Google with "startup microsoft" or "startup pricing microsoft" would have been enough effort to figure this out.

[Animats]

No. That's not how sales organizations for competent companies work.

IBM, in the mainframe era, was very good at this. It was IBM policy that if you called anyone within IBM sales with a problem, it was the IBM employee's job to get you to the right people. All IBM salespeople had a little printed pocket book of phone numbers within IBM, a directory of contacts for various types of problems.

[mikestew]

Man, I can't upvote this enough. Say what you will about the IBM of old or new, when you called you didn't have to put up with this runaround of putting the onus on the potential customer. "Hi, IBM, I'd like to give you money." "Just a moment, sir, and the next person you speak with will be the one that can help you."

"Hi, Microsoft, I'd like to give you money but fuck me if I can figure out which SKU or how much." "You did it wrong, sir. You should have called this other number. Or you should have Googled it. But the last thing you should have done is called me, have a nice day. <click>"

I ran into this almost ten years ago trying to price the various SKUs we needed for Visual Studio. It was appallingly ridiculous how much time I spent on that, in contrast to just going to a web page, comparing features, click a few radio buttons, click "Buy", sorted. It was the last place I've worked since that I've had to beg Microsoft to take my money. Now they just plain don't get my money.

Signed, A very disappointed ex-MSFT employee and ex-shareholder

[hackuser]

For the record, that hasn't been my experience with IBM; I used to get a pretty bad runaround, but perhaps that's changed - I stopped using their products as a result.

[holyoly]

The fact that you have to go to Google to search to find Microsoft pricing, and have to already have the knowledge that they have special "startup" pricing is a failure on Microsoft's part.

[thedaemon]

I still can't find accurate Microsoft pricing with my Google-fu. It's ludicrous!

[levemi]

You know given the title and the bait it presents to a particular kind of people I should have known better than share with people a positive thing about Microsoft and to suggest they think for themselves.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Do you understand how that sounds?

"We failed to sell you something you wanted, and it's your fault."

Besides, BizSpark is solely for startups, not for established SMBs, who would quite reasonably expect to be able to sign up for Enterprise by searching for "Enterprise".

Is this too obvious, perhaps?

[jessaustin]

Is it really your assumption that thread parent neglected even to google this topic of such great import to business success? That seems neither likely nor charitable.

[levemi]

It's definitely more palatable than blindly bringing out the "M$" pitchforks but I guess if you were looking for something on HN to get your daily anger fix I guess feel free to use this as your opportunity.

[chris_wot]

It's irrelevant if Microsoft are a huge organization with tens of thousands of employees. Sales aren't made via excuses.

Putting the responsibility on the customer to find the right set of keywords - in Google no less! - to purchase copies of enterprise software is bizarre.

[jessaustin]

Hahaha, "we only sell to Bing users!" Now that's a strategy tax!