June 20, 2002

6:01 AM

Ease of Use?IBM sends mixed message... see how complicated the instructions are to order this poster.
posted by TNLNYC (15 comments total)

Heh.
posted by ColdChef at 6:03 AM on June 20, 2002

I love starting the day with a good guffaw. Thanks.
posted by Shadowkeeper at 6:10 AM on June 20, 2002

Nice.

Weird that you can download the PDF with two clicks --and imagine, the first click is right on that screen. You can get the free poster easily (as long as you foot the toner bill). But to pay for a poster is hard.
posted by zpousman at 6:21 AM on June 20, 2002

The real culprit is their pubs ordering system front end, which is an insanely rotted, half-baked and myopically designed hack job. View the source and gape in wonder.

If they knew you were coming from the US, they could actually offer a direct link to purchase the poster. However, the way their international rats-nest is structured, this doesn't work for other countries. In fact, as far as I could see from a random selection, many countries can't order the poster at all.

"Easy to use is easy to say" -- does anyone know whether Jeff Garbers really originated this?
posted by anser at 6:28 AM on June 20, 2002

I tried to order some of these posters a little over a year ago. Once I figured out how to order, the system kept rejecting the order because the product number was wrong. I ended up trading several e-mails with some IBMer in Denmark (apparently this was/is handled out of Denmark) but no one could ever figure out what the correct product number actually should be!
posted by dchase at 6:35 AM on June 20, 2002

Kind of makes you wonder how they managed to be so 'efficient' in WW2 Germany.

(Hah! Godwin's Law in six!)
posted by tpoh.org at 6:53 AM on June 20, 2002

Geez. You could probably MAKE the poster before you finished ordering it.
posted by groundhog at 6:54 AM on June 20, 2002

irony is such a beautiful thing. and so are single line posts.
posted by shadow45 at 6:55 AM on June 20, 2002

Cool.
posted by MattD at 7:03 AM on June 20, 2002

IBM is the example on the left, correct?
posted by rich at 7:27 AM on June 20, 2002

heheheh...great start to the day. Groovy link. Danke :)
posted by dejah420 at 7:35 AM on June 20, 2002

It has to be a joke! Or the marketing person who caused this chaos needs to be quartered.
posted by Jeremy at 9:42 AM on June 20, 2002

I find it equally disturbing that they put version numbers on posters.
posted by Miss Beth at 3:49 PM on June 20, 2002

What? After 4 exceedingly obvious clicks, I was finalizing my order by providing invoice and delivery information...
posted by Zurishaddai at 6:54 PM on June 20, 2002

As an employee of a "victim" of IBM consulting, I'm not all that surprised...

IBM has a name and a marketing machine... to put it in terms of an automobile, once you look under the hood, you'll find a money vacuum where you should normally see a motor. Slick ads though.
posted by clevershark at 8:53 PM on June 20, 2002