From an ongoing dialogue with one of our suppliers:

> From: [Name deleted to protect the, uh, whatever.]
> 
> Simon,
> 
> My name is [Name deleted] and I am an account manager at Inetsoft. My 
> records show that
> your maintenance expired on May 1, 2004. To get support at 
> this point, you
> would renew maintenance as usual, but also would need to pay 
> a $100 penalty
> for the breach in maintenance (This should have been indicated on the
> original quote). As you were operating on the complementary 60-day
> maintenance, a 1-year extended maintenance would be traced 
> back to the date
> of purchase (Mar 2, 2004), giving a renewal date of Mar 1, 2005.

So, as I read this, in order to get serious defects in your product repaired,
you want to charge me a year's fee for six month's support, plus a hundred
dollar fine on top?

This doesn't sound too reasonable to me...

Cheers,
Simon Brunning.

Update: They got back to me:

Please understand without these terms, many customers would decline initial
maintenance, and come back to the sales department and purchase maintenance
only when they run into a problem. This causes problems for our customers,
as they need to produce the funds and process the order all the while
development is on hold because of a bug or issue in the software that does
not allow them to continue their efforts. Comparatively speaking, the
penalty is a small amount and is primarily in place to discourage this
activity.

Ah, so these terms are for our benefit! It all makes sense now!

iText it is, then.