ED HAYES

While navigating my way around the Internet, I come across glaring errors all the time; calculation errors, typos, horrible formatting, etcetera.  Errors are more common that I could imagine.  These errors dilute my trust in a company’s brand and make me think twice before doing business with them.  It is so incredibly vital to review everything before publishing content to the Internet; you never know who could be looking at it.  Below are two examples.

Example 1: The Grocery Game

The Grocery Game is a service that informs their customers on how to combine coupons and promotions, at a variety of grocery stores, in order to get the best deal possible.  They distribute updates on a weekly basis to paying customers.  Here is a screen shot from an E-mail they recently sent me encouraging me to sign up.

Since when does $2 divided by 3 equal $0.55?  I would think their E-mail marketing would go through a more vigorous editorial review then their product.  If their marketing is inaccurate, how accurate is their service I would pay for? Or if this is a screen shot of the actual service, I now know that I would be paying for something that was not correct.  After seeing this, I could never trust the company.

Example 2: JBoss

I recently received an E-mail newsletter from a local consulting firm that my friend works for. They mentioned “JBoss” in the newsletter many times, so I thought I would do some research into what JBoss was.  I was browsing RedHat’s website and found this example comparing the cost savings JBoss provides compared to IBM WebSphere and Oracle SOA Suite.  I thought I would play around with the tool a bit. Check out these calculations:

I don’t see how 20% of  $212,800 is $212,800.  Am I missing something?

It appears as though they were going to add up the column and have a Total License Cost like they had in the first column.  But, in year two and three, they all add up to $0.

Both of these errors impact the savings calculation shown on the bottom of the tool.  If RedHat’s savings tool doesn’t work, why would I trust the service they are selling with my company’s data?