In my experience, the worst customers are when you are not dealing with the customer directly, and have some sort of consulting or global services consulting co

In my experience, the worst customers are when you are not dealing with the customer directly, and have some sort of consulting or global services consulting company in the way. Most customers are not particularly difficult if you can interface with them directly, but the middleman has their own set of incentives that don't necessarily align with either yours or the end customer's. Throw in the extra communication overhead and room for error when playing telephone like that, and the typical communication styles of such VARs (daily status calls, expectation of instant support at ungodly hours, reluctance to put anything in writing or email, bald-faced dishonesty at times...), and it can be downright soul-sucking.