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Clue-free zone

February 10th, 2003

I’m trying to find where I can get a Canadian price for Funk Software’s Steel-Belted Radius authentication server software. There’s no “Where to Buy” link on their site. The closest I can get is the reseller area of their site, where they say:

Funk Software actively encourages fulfillment of our products through the reseller channel.

Geez, what a load of tripe. What’s wrong with “We don’t sell directly to the public – contact one of our resellers”.

Then they say:

In this area of the site, you’ll find a list of our authorized distributors, how to contact them, and how to order.

Ain’t no such list. Or if there is, it’s FAR from obvious where it is. Finally, after going through their Site Map, I reach their reseller search form. It returns me the names and phone numbers of resellers in my area. No web links – I have to find them myself.

These guys need to read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think book.

Do they really want me to buy their product, or are they only interested in business from the resellers and are relying on them to sell it? Those distinctions mean nothing to the consumer. Nonexistent customer relations from the manufacturer will turn end users off just as quickly.

One comment to “Clue-free zone”

  1. hmmm. are you hogtied to funk? i’ve been dabbling with freeradius. easy to setup and running in some pretty hefty production environments.

    they just started the testimonials [1] page, which is why it’s so skimpy.

    [1] http://www.freeradius.org/testimonials.html