You're dead on with all of this. To add to your point, the worst and most regrettable software product my company uses would have been immediately exposed as no

You're dead on with all of this. To add to your point, the worst and most regrettable software product my company uses would have been immediately exposed as non-viable had I been allowed to get my hands dirty and run a couple of test cases. As it was, the sales-person "yada-yada'd" my technical questions (more fool me, yes, but I didn't know enough about their internals - the primary cause of our discontent stems from a truly stupid database-design decision) and so I lacked the context to make an informed decision. (I'm more experienced and more suspicious now; I don't think I'd make the same mistake again.) You can add borderline-fraudulent sales practice and avoiding discovery of truly bad products to the list.