Real Story: How IBM Dealt with a "Bad-Faith" Customer

If you're on the vendor side, who hasn't been burned by a client?

Especially the ones with no conscience—they couldn't care less whether we live or die. They put us through hell a thousand times over, and most of the time we vendors just have to swallow it like bitter medicine and keep our mouths shut. We're dying inside, but we can't say a word.

So I want to tell a story that'll give everyone some sweet satisfaction—about how my former employer, IBM, once taught a major state-owned bank client a lesson they wouldn't forget.

When I worked in IBM's services division, we had a major state-owned bank as a client—big business, frequent engagements. This VIP client had a habit we absolutely dreaded, a recurring holiday tradition: right before every long holiday—Labor Day, National Day, New Year's (thank you for sparing us during Spring Festival)—they'd drop an RFP a day or two before the break and expect bids submitted right after the holiday.

They'd breeze off and enjoy their holiday without a care in the world, while our side went into full meltdown. It wasn't just sales and presales pulling all-nighters to prepare the proposal—the entire back-end approval chain had to work through the holiday too: delivery, quality control, project management, pricing, finance, legal. Didn't matter if you'd booked a ski trip to the Swiss Alps or an expedition to Antarctica, promised to go home for a family reunion dinner with your parents, or signed your kid up for summer camp—everything got cancelled. After a few years of this, the moment anyone in our department heard that client's name, it was like hearing a plague was coming. People would run as far as they could to avoid getting drafted onto that account's bid—because it meant your holiday was gone.

Eventually even the sales team couldn't take it anymore and decided to take action to cure the client of this bad habit. They came up with a clever plan: since the tender couldn't proceed without us bidding, why not sit one out and let the client get a taste of their own medicine?

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