getting screwed....again

More than 3 years ago I blogged about an awesome new practice that Caterpillar was instituting. It is somewhat complicated, so just read that post to understand more about what why this sucks.

This week, I received notices from Caterpillar via email. These notices basically said the following:

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Dear everyone who pays us money for things we buy from you,

We will now be screwing you in yet another new and exciting way. Some of the big wigs here decided we could fire some people and generally cut down on some of our administrative overhead (read: healthcare costs) by using some 3rd party accounts payable software. We also cut a deal with the postal service so they no longer have to deliver mail to our offices! From now on:

1) If you want sell us something, we will generate a PO and send it to you via email or fax. All electronic eliminates paperwork and the cost of processing the paper. You will actually probably appreciate this aspect.
2) (The best part) We won't accept your paper invoices anymore!!!!

To accomplish this, YOU must PAY a 3rd party for access to this software. You will pay them about 1% of your revenue passed through this system. So remember, like before, if we are your biggest customer (or only customer) you are basically screwed! You are now losing another 1% of your already low profit margins. (By the way, if you are one of our super large suppliers who we really depend on, please just work with us to use this system...the fee structure works in favor of larger companies.)

Also. EVERYONE THAT WE ARE SENDING THESE EMAILS TO IS STUPID! THOSE OF US THAT STILL WORK HERE ONLY WANT TO DO THE MINIMUM AMOUNT OF WORK! SO READ ALL OF THESE 15 EMAILS THAT WE ARE SENDING AND PRINT THEM ALL OUT AND DON'T LOSE THEM!!!!1111oneoneone YOU KNOW WE WILL TAKE OUR SWEET TIME FIXING YOUR PROBLEM IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE.

Again, please note: This is how it is going to be from now on. We can do this because we are a huge giant company, we don't care about the people we do business with, and everyone else is doing it so we figured we should jump on board.

For those of you that only have very small contracts with us, this will probably be of benefit to you, as you will get your payments even faster. However, those of you that do a large percentage of your business with Caterpillar, you will be screwed in a new and exciting way.

-Sincerely
-The lamers at Caterpillar

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Reason #2370492 why big business sucks.