HOUSTON, TX — Mark Pace expected his SQL server upgrade to be routine and uneventful. Having concluded that his company had grown to the point where the purchase of a new storage device that would carry it through the next three or four years was a good idea, he researched the market to see what was available. It didn’t take long for him to conclude that a solid state disk array from Texas Memory Systems was the best investment in his system’s future. According to Pace, however, the purchase wasn’t as simple as it should have been.Pace told YNOT that on Thursday, March 2nd, he contacted Houston-based Texas Memory Systems, requested information about the product he wanted to purchase, and informed the company’s sales staff that it could expect a sale.
As he and the company’s sales rep made their way through the process of acquiring the $36,000 piece of hardware, Pace says that during one of the conversation he explained how he owns Bondage.com, “an adult community site.”
Having never before made a sale to an adult entity, the excited sales rep reportedly shared her triumph with the company’s CEO – who informed her that, as Pace puts it, “it’s company policy that they don’t sell to companies like us… and that’s it.”
Calls to Texas Memory Systems resulted in the operator explaining to YNOT that she “can’t give out” the name of the company’s CEO, followed by a brief conversation with a man named Woody Hudsol, who affirmed the story as told by Pace, stating that the matter was “kind of” in his department but that he had been out of the office on the day that the incident is said to have occurred. As Hudsol explains it, he heard about the issue “as I walked in this morning and thought, ‘Oh, that sounds kind of interesting. I need to talk to the CEO about the policy.’”
Hudsol, who indicated a willingness to call back with more information, has not yet followed up.
Pace is determined to improve his services with the preferred system regardless of whether the manufacturer will sell to him directly or through a reseller, although he admits to feeling “shocked” by the experience.
“Teach me to tell anybody the truth anymore,” he reflected with bitter good-humor. “God forbid they should break into a new market or anything.”
Although sensitive to the fact that many companies prefer not to work with adult businesses, particularly when content and copyright are involved, Pace finds the idea that a computer hardware company would refuse to do big business with him astonishing.
“It never crossed my mind that anyone would have a problem with that. Do they do business with defense contractors? They probably do. So, choose your evil.”
Information about Texas Memory Systems can be found at http://www.superssd.com.
