Ok, I'm interested to hear how others deal with 3rd parties.

Following getting a customers service installed in Hornby by Telstra, I now need to set up the router and configure their computers with usage meter etc.  All the normal obvious stuff.

Clearly this means I need all the customers provider details.

2 Decades ago I'd just get a standard letter of authority signed and all providers would accept this and I'd get all the relevant details.

Yesterday I struck the 'oh, no the customer will have to provide those details to you...'... well the customer has trouble sending emails let alone forwarding them.

Now it's all a bit stupid really isn't it, because as I'm their email vendor, I can just access the emails directly in the server... but that's not the point.  It's not really the appropriate way to do it.

This is why I always prefer to just deal with smaller providers, because I get a single point of contact, some one with a degree of trust (which you earn on both sides) and all this stupidness is side stepped.

But how do others manage these relationships and do they find they steer away from the bigger providers because it's more of a headake to deal with them?