Thanks, David, read the article with interest.  It certainly confirmed a lot of conclusions I had reached based on our relationship with most of these vendors.  We are attempting to get as high tech as we can, but the main complaint I have is that while we are complying with our customers' demands that we use the technology (ie, doing the reports online at their websites) it annoys the heck out of me that they don't want to pay us any more for essentially doing their data entry for them.  That means they get to save money twice, once by not increasing our fees and once by not having to hire and pay data entry people.  Grrrrr! Yet our costs, especially gas, keep going up and up.  T'ain't fair, somehow.