#customers

After spending the weekend trying to recalibrate my mental health following the absolute disaster that is ODW, it's back to it tomorrow. Oh, the dread.

Why is it so unbelievably bad? And this isn't just a case of complaining because it's a new tool and people don't like change. It's fundamentally broken. Everything takes longer, the migrated data is a complete mess, and the overall experience is genuinely painful.

How does a global company of this size manage to roll out something so poorly executed?

At this point, are they not only trying to drive employees out, but actively encouraging customers to take their business elsewhere and switch vendors?

This past week, I had two more big accounts that are no longer renewing and I cant blame them. I know one of them really well as I have been working with them for almost a decade and they basically came out and said they no longer have any confidence in our company to support itself or exist for very long. It feels like even the customers are anticipating this place to implode soon. I agree with what was said on another post that soon there wont be anything left of this place to payout to people that are being laid off.

I just saw the video of Venas threat to shippers who oppose the merger and I'm stunned! I saw another article where he said "humor is good", except I didn't hear anyone laughing or clapping about it! He wasn't even smiling about it which really suggests he was serious about that threat. He messed up the railroad pretty badly during his first stint at the UP. Then he comes back to mess it up even more by hacking more jobs, make phony promises about "jobs for life", and then threatens shippers with rate increases! What does this guy have to do to get fired???

Laying off local folks while offshoring all they can - that's wrong on so many levels and deserves to have some consequences. I hope customers leave in droves.

DFH treats employees worse that they treat their customers.

This video examines Broadcom's controversial $61 billion acquisition of VMware in 2023, led by CEO Hock Tan. The deal followed Broadcom's established "franchise business" strategy: acquire companies with essential, deeply embedded technology, aggressively cut costs, and extract maximum revenue from customers who find it too expensive or complicated to leave.

Key impacts on VMware customers:

• Elimination of perpetual licenses: Within weeks of closing the deal, Broadcom moved customers toward subscription-based licensing, disrupting IT budgets and long-term infrastructure planning.
• Drastic price increases: Major customers, including AT&T, Fidelity, and UnitedHealthcare, reportedly faced price increases ranging from 300% to more than 1,000%.
• Forced product bundling: Broadcom consolidated more than 160 products into a handful of core bundles, requiring customers to pay for features and capabilities they may not need.
• Migration roadblocks: Changes to VMware's partner ecosystem and restrictions involving the VDDK (Virtual Disk Development Kit) reportedly made it harder for organizations to migrate virtual machines to competitors such as Nutanix or cloud providers.

Business and legal fallout:

• Several major corporations filed lawsuits against Broadcom over licensing changes, contractual disputes, and threats of service termination. Some cases resulted in confidential settlements.
• Broadcom faced widespread customer backlash and EU antitrust scrutiny, yet achieved its financial targets ahead of schedule.
• Despite the controversy, Broadcom's stock reached record highs, while VMware's operating margins improved significantly under the new ownership.

The central argument is that Broadcom doesn't necessarily need VMware customers to be happy. It needs them to stay. For many organizations, the cost, complexity, and operational risk of migrating away from VMware currently outweigh the financial pain of remaining.

Broadcom is betting that customer dependency, higher recurring subscription revenue, and future demand for AI infrastructure will continue to make VMware a highly profitable acquisition.

The question is whether customers will remain trapped indefinitely or whether Broadcom's aggressive monetization strategy will eventually drive enough organizations toward competing virtualization platforms to undermine its long-term business.

Video Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH1yGy0JSUA

Anyone else get a pocket change raise despite improved numbers back in April? This is what the on-highs think of us and Canon Customers.

Canon USA and its parent company received a $109 million USD (~17 billion yen) U.S. tariff refund following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that invalidated tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
Key Details of the Refund
• Government Process: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched Phase 2 of its Customs Automated Processing Environment (CAPE) refund system on June 29, 2026.
• Canon's Recovery: Canon initiated its refund application in June 2026 and completed the review process, expecting to record the $109 million refund (plus interest) in Q2 2026. Overall, Canon reported recovering about 90% of its eligible tariff costs by June 2026.
• Financial Impact: The tariff refund added approximately 58 billion yen to Canon's second-quarter operating profit, boosting its Q2 2026 operating profit to 159.2 billion yen.

Why would you make it difficult for your customers or frustrate your customers ??
You should want customers to be able to purchase items in a seamless environment, not have difficulty from everything from finding a sales clerk, to being able to price checkers without having to pull out their cell phone. It’s absolutely absurd.

https://247wallst.com/personal-finance/2026/09/21/humana-is-dropping-plans-covering-600000-members-and-hopes-240000-choose-humana-again-the-replacement-is-not-the-same-plan/

Belk’s workplace culture is antiquated and old school, as is the customer base.

The customer base is dying. Literally. Belk’s customers are kicking the bucket and there is nobody to replace them.

Verizon scales back a perk that keeps prices low for customers

Verizon is walking back a commitment it made to customers just last year as it faces a changing competitive landscape.

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/verizon-removes-price-lock-guarantee-from-myplan

Does the company care about its customers?

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/trump-says-canadas-bombardier-cannot-175122394.html

We are already struggling. Let’s give customers a force majeure event to break contracts. I repeat my forecast of Honeywell aero stock at 120

This is the slowest I have ever seen. No one is at 100% phones, not even close. We will go hours without seeing a single customer. It is very scary how slow we are.

Imagine you’re one of a seller’s customers and you’ve just spent $2 million on Cisco security products. You’ve spent months negotiating discounts, explaining budget pressure, and hearing that the seller has pushed internally to get you “the absolute best deal possible.”

Then LinkedIn serves you a photograph of your AE holding a giant HAWAII boarding pass because they crushed their sales target

Verizon customers throughout the Summit City are delighted and experiencing outages

https://www.wane.com/top-stories/verizon-customers-throughout-the-summit-city-are-experiencing-outages/

Are we winning any new airlines? Seems like it is slow and we are loosing business?

How is it possible to continue with an organization Senior Director staffed with zero revenues going on 2+ years?

Use that budget to support Customers and grow real revenues.

Competiton is real. DEI is not.

Really ? This trade in tool is what our company put out there ? It has outdated promo's. Even if you select the promo you want - it will trade in the device for the lesser value - not bad huh, nice way to rip off customers. And who types this stuff up anyways ? Do they speak english ? Sub par software at best.

More plans now getting price increases.

As for why the prices are going up, AT&T’s support pages read, “This change helps us continue providing reliable network service, quality products, and great customer experiences.”

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/making-sense-of-at-ts-hiked-prices-for-legacy-phone-plans/

Did Broadcom acquire VMware, raise prices for many businesses both large and small, decide it no longer wanted smaller clients and instead focus on large, profitable customers, and lay off employees who may then have been hired by companies like Nutanix?

what is the new rewards program for belk charge cards, it will start in august or september but belk is being tight lipped about it. some are saying it will be less rewards and customers will have a 39% interest rate.

Hey Leadership!!

Check it out… laid off employees typically want nothing to do with the company that laid them off after they leave.

Guess what else? When their families and friends hear about it, they often don't want anything to do with that company either!!

What a concept! I know if I leave. I am taking my many, many lines and going straight to TMO.

Word of mouth is coming back to haunt these id--ts. Investors take note!

Whatever happened to the VLC shadow board? I was energized and excited by the LinkedIn posts and game changing thought leadership. It’s clear that it made a real difference in the company, and I hope Dan and what’s left of his leadership team continue this tradition as we play to win for our customers and communities!

They don't want to hear certain opinions that differ from their own.

They want to silence voices when CDW already does that in exchange for letting us keep our jobs.

Go ahead and copy and paste a long winded nonsense to ratio other coworkers opinions and thoughts. Maybe another poem about across the pond or about the winters in NY. Maybe spam with foreign languages posts.

Great people and culture.

Spew this to customers and see what happens.

YOU ALL SHOULD KNOW CUSTOMERS CAN VISIT & READ EVERYTHING ON THIS SITE AS WELL!!!

The large disconnect between Truist Messaging and the way it treats its employees and clients has to be the greatest hypocrisy of any marketing campaign. Employees are being set up, thrown out, and reputations smeared. Clients are getting over engineered loans and being pushed out aggressively for no reason. This doesn’t seem to fit anything w purpose? Certainly isn’t making better lives and communities. Definitely not unwavering with care!? How can you throw some many lies out there and think the public won’t figure it out? Great job Bill. You get an F for CEO. Failing grade.

I love seeing Cengage crumble through this gossip site and my friends eyes who still suffer there until they get a new gig.

I get calls from professors asking for help lol. I just recommended other publishers.

Down $7.50 so far today. How low can it go???

Based on the news today, it looks like we really hate our customers so I guess the strategy is backwards growth.

I don't know whether my team will be cut in June, October, or sometime in between. We've lost so many customers who chose not to renew their contracts for our products. A lot of that seems tied to the fallout after the CHC attack, but honestly many customers were already unhappy with the level of service as more operations shifted offshore.

For those of you who have already moved on, are there any large healthcare organizations you'd recommend looking into?

Where is the work in Expert Labs in the US? There is no work at all, customers are not signing anything and it looks like everybody is busy (wasting their time) with Bob!

Comments?

T&Cs for me but not for thee?

https://dailyjournal.com/article/392055-judge-certifies-class-action-accusing-ricoh-of-systematic-printer-service-overbilling

I’m hearing that across the US. Many midsized customers will go warehouse in October. What’s the word out there?

great new signage program...deceiving!, not right!...deceiving!...TPD'S signs...LADY WAS IRATE!.....dont worry....we'll keep dealing with mad customers, while u dont have to..smh...2 SALE signs, really?....STOP.....wasn't broken!

The title says it all. It’s great to be an OTEXer and shareholder. Our customers should be pleased.

We are hiring for our return to growth

We need lots of people fod our new customers

Is this double dipping? Fuel supply agreements are made sometimes years ahead while prices are cheap. Not fair to keep adding fuel price hikes to the customer. Customers are not blind to this they just move on to better deals.

Customers are noticing our decline

https://www.dbsmps.com/whats-happening-to-xerox-and-what-it-means-for-your-business/

https://www.investmentnews.com/wirehouses/citi-turns-up-the-heat-on-wealth-bankers-as-it-races-to-close-the-gap-with-rivals/266043

Not layoff related so I apologize for that. But it is getting exceedingly difficult to see a winning strategy with this bold move, Cotton.

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/att-puts-loyalty-at-risk-with-stern-warning-to-customers

You must agree that it is understandable everyone is angry - in the last few months we have seen dedicated and caring people who really wanted to help Humana and its customers succeed. Those who remain are nervous since people were let go just because of a sweeping decision - nothing they could control or would they underperforming employees. HR is not helping - there are open positions and they are not helping hiring managers bring some of these folks into these open positions.

I'm still here and I am here because I was interested in helping seniors - but it is hard when I'm watching us deny them care and making them fight for benefits. It has been extremely difficult watching the people I saw give so much to the organization leave and some slackers who took credit but did nothing are still here!

I know this happens all the time but knowing that does not make it any easier! It is just hard to work in an underperforming organization - at any company going through this, it is toxic until it settles down. It just hasn't been good for years and years!

Please don't tell me to "just quit" - I care about my customers / patients! I care about my coworkers! And, the reality is that it is not just as simple as "just quit" - we all have to have an income to survive. We are allowed to be sad, mad, stressed, concerned, fearful, and hopeful - or any emotion we are feeling - we are allowed to be human!