"We refused to pay the bill and Oracle could not even provide a list of what we'd bought"
"In the end we gave them a list of what we used after performing an internal audit."
That's more like how such negotiations (and it is a negotiation, your money versus their hassle) should be conducted.
If it wasn't a multi $Bn company you'd actually bought software off of it sounds a lot like a version of the "pro forma invoice" scam, not unlike the old "Readers Digest" nonsense.
S/W companies have astonishing data management practices. I've seen very high end development environments where the "contact" listed was the CFO who'd signed the contract.
They had no f**king clue who within IT used it, or who was in charge of IT. All they had kept was the CFO name, which was often years out of date.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
