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VMware's in court again. Customer relationships rarely go this wrong

(www.theregister.com)
245 points rntn | 1 comments | 08 Sep 25 12:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.238s | source
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wkat4242 ◴[08 Sep 25 12:42 UTC] No.45167565[source]▶
The bigger issue is, if you're refusing to honour a contract as a vendor, not only do you risk a lawsuit like this one. But more importantly, who is ever going to sign up for another contract with you? You just proved it isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Unwritten terms like "valid until I decide to tear it up haha lol" are not generally appreciated by companies that depend on your stuff for their business. Of course you can extort your existing customers until they manage to move away but basically in the longer term you're suiciding your entire business.

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1. wer232essf ◴[08 Sep 25 15:16 UTC] No.45169373[source]▶
Yeah, I’ve seen this play out before in a past role when we were dealing with a smaller SaaS vendor who suddenly decided to “reinterpret” our agreement. They didn’t outright tear up the contract, but they quietly shifted what features were included in our plan and suddenly started putting core functionality behind a new “premium” tier. Technically they argued that they were within their rights, but for us as customers it felt like a bait-and-switch. It created this immediate sense of distrust — not just with the product, but with the entire company. Even though we depended on them at the time, we started actively looking for alternatives, because who wants to be stuck building a business on top of a service that can just change the rules on a whim?