Prank calls from Oracle
More than a week ago I received a phone call. The audio quality was low. The caller had her voice so overamplified that it sounded extremely distorted, just like small cheap chinese radio with volume pumped up to the maximum. Besides that, the caller-lady was a native russian and tried to speak estonian, that didn’t go very well. Although I just couldn’t understand everything the caller wanted to say (because of the distorted pidgin-estonian), it appeared that the caller was from Oracle’s London office and wanted me to become their product reseller. She asked me some questions about my company (size, services, customers) and asked if I want to be contacted by someone who could explain me the offer. Since I was interested and was hoping to speak normal english over a normal-sounding phone-line about the offer, I agreed.
Another lady called from Oracle a week later. This time the the sound quality was the opposite of the first call, but not better. It was so silent. I had to krank my cellphone volume up to eleven and I still couldn’t hear everything. But still, the lady spoke pure english. We actually had some conversation, although I had to ask her to repeat almost everything what she had said. But this conversatioin was short. She somehow thought that I had contacted Oracle with the intention of becoming their reseller and I explained that it was vice-versa, the offer was made from the Oracle and I needed more information about the whole thing. Then she asked some questions about my company size, I answered that our company is a small consulting company and it has somewhat 1-3 full-time working employees and many other friendly companies that can be used to team up with for more serious software development. After that she said good bye and hanged up.
So what had happened? First they call me and want me to be their product reseller, second time they call and just hang up after I explain that I need more information about the whole thing. Might also be that my company is too small to satisfy the Oracle’s reseller requirements. But, since my job is to help my customers to make better software, I also have some influence on choosing database vendors.
Corporate stupidity at its finest?