[Icemaster]

Ok, try this one:

I've found myself in a situation of being a vendor (in professional life) to a company to whom I'm a customer (in personal life).

Jekyl and Hyde in the worst possible way.

They've been good and solid to me as a consumer of their products, however they're very near if not at the top of the list of the worst company I've ever dealt with in a vendor relationship perspective. Having been in services and consulting business long enough, I'm clear on the perspective that the customer aint always right, but the customer does pay the bills - if they want blue widgets even when you've clearly told them that blue widgets change tires, not clean bathrooms, then you give them blue widgets and make sure you're covered on your position.

But when a customer goes over the line of being demanding to outright abusive, laden with personal attacks, that's too far IMHO. If your paying attention, it can give one insight into the culture within an organization that starts to raise some interestign questions.

On one hand, I applaud the desire to protect the customers and can fully support that; but when my engineers and I are on the blunt end of the ***** stick and subject to personal attacks (publicly, in large meetings with many of their senior leadership present or on emails passed through the project team) I'm seeing a side that I dont want to associate with.

For perspective, this isn't a one time thing; it's been ongoing thru the life of the proejct. And I'm not talking about someone calling me or one of my guys poopy heads, I'm talking full on "you guys are a bunch of f*****g amateurs", "brainless idiots", "[this guy] couldnt design his way out of a paper bag" type of insults. I've been called worse, I can deal with this, but my guys shouldnt have to. Making matters worse, there's been the classic cover and shift move for some stuff that went sideways that we never touched - my company getting blamed for issues that they're having on systems we never touched.

Point being - what would you all do as a CUSTOMER of a company like this who uncovered this behavior? I have moral issues here, not pride.