The Wonders of Running your own Business

Joel just posted about the wonders of doing interesting stuff when you run your own business. I have something similarly “interesting” that happened to me ordering a Dell Server. At the time I had a business in belgium, but lived in Germany, hosting all our servers in the US. So we talked to Dell, actually having to talk to Dell in Belgium was the first experience. Then we thought we’d just buy a server in the US, nope, not possible. We couldn’t buy in Germany either. We needed to buy the server in Belgium. In the end, we bought one in Belgium, took it to Germany, installed everything, made it ready for shipment, and then shipped it to the US. We had loads of problems at US customs with a form not having been filled out. Nobody from Dell or DHL could help us at the beginning, until we found somebody from DHL who said something like: “That’s a standard pc right?” … “Yes. A server.” … “Good, then you don’t need to fill out the form, just tick _Does not apply._.” Ahhhhhhhh…. :) So much for globalization :)