> Those progression steps happened with each vendor? A vendor started with massive wine, and ended with coffee in the last meeting? Multiple vendors followed t

> Those progression steps happened with each vendor? A vendor started with massive wine, and ended with coffee in the last meeting? Multiple vendors followed the same pattern. In all cases we were already pre-qualified as a potential customer/existing customer expanding the account value and the vendor was pre-qualified as a possible vendor. They knew they were in the running to sell us the gear ( and service contract on a top of it ) and we did not disqualify them outright. > I'm surprised that wine and dine apparently works (with many people but not you). It is so popular that Walmart made accepting it a fireable offense for procurement people as they crunched the numbers and found that suppliers willing to wine and dine were closing deals at the higher prices.