While problems occur to everyone, the issue I've been fighting for years are vendors who at first deny they are having problems when you ask them about a problem. But, I suspect the analysts are correct, there is very little downside for a company to try to coverup problems. They can always apologize later, and it won't have any long-term effect. "Microsoft acknowledged in February that it had experienced problems with the servers that handle MSN Messenger, after denying for several days that problems existed. That outage came after a series of technical glitches and a hacker attack that prevented many people from accessing the company's Web site. The most recent glitch left many users frustrated, but some analysts doubted it would have any long-term effect on the company's efforts." http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010705/tc/msn_messenger_1.html