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the common law of business practice

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Someone* once said this of choosing a vendor's solution based on price alone:

"There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person's lawful prey. It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot – it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better."

It's called the common law of business practice.

*It's frequently attributed to a specific author but those attributions appear to be in error. No matter, it's an impediment that I've seen time and again.