"No problem -- we do that already for other customers."
It takes several weeks for the big company's EDI group to get in touch with fish. They swap document specifications and set up trading-partner data.
Then, out of nowhere, the big company's EDI group informs fish that the project has been canceled and that they've notified all the appropriate people.
"A week later, the buyer calls me wanting to know the status of the project," says fish. "He threatens to start buying elsewhere if we don't get this working. Of course, he's not happy to find out that his company canceled the project. He indicates that he'll straighten this out and I'll be contacted."
And so he is, a month later, by someone at the big company's EDI group. The project proceeds, fish does the work on his end, and testing begins.
Then one day the tech at the big company suddenly stops communicating with fish.
A month later, after fish has made several attempts to contact the big company's EDI group, he gets an e-mail message from a manager over there, telling him the project has been canceled.
"I call the purchaser and explain that his EDI group canceled the project," reports fish. "And the whole cycle starts over again.
"We've been through this cycle now four times in the past two years. I just received another e-mail canceling the project. We still aren't sending them shipping information via EDI!"
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