… because vendors try to make a fool of them every day of the year.

As per our recent 3-part series on Now is NOT a Good Time To Buy (1, 2, and 3), vendors across the board are trying to overcharge you on a daily basis, by as much as 900% of the software’s actual value.

Services vendors are constantly trying to push you towards the most expensive offerings (that give them the greatest kickbacks, sorry, partner commissions), upsell you on as many modules (that you don’t need) as possible, drag out the implementation (which they know will be easy because they know you’re not organizationally ready to support an implementation because they didn’t prepare you because you didn’t ask), insist on extraneous integrations using custom connectors, and then up-sell you on training for an overly complex system you weren’t ready for.

Then there are GPOs who are claiming they can save you dollars you can’t save on your own, and that you should hand over a whole host of categories to them for an annual six figure access fee and a slice of every transaction, even though you could do just as good on your own managing the larger categories they want to hand over (by the time you factor in the transaction fee and the amortized GPO access fee) and handing the rest over to low cost Amazon Business.

Then there are the marketplaces you need to use for your tail spend that try to convince you to pay preferred access fees, priority order processing fees, expedited shipping fees (for carriers they control), etc. All extra costs for non-priority goods and MRO.

And, of course, when the sales person at the supplier thinks that you don’t have any other immediate options, they come up with fees you never heard of in order to guarantee that order.

In other words, every vendor and supplier is trying to make a fool out of you every day. There’s nothing else they can try to pull on April Fools day that they haven’t already. Multiple times.

In other words, we’re the one profession that doesn’t have to worry about being an April fool, as we deal with tricksters, cons, and frauds every other day of the year.