Talk:Spiff

Spiff should not be merged with Spif. "Spiff" has a single meaning, while "Spif" appears to have at least three, two of which are unrelated to the meaning found in "Spiff." Merging them would create confusion, not clarity. SAlbert 18:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

'''Spiff versus kickback

I disgree that the article cited in footnote 1 "1. ^ Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff | InfoWorld | Tech firm kickback scandal could claim many victims | April 19, 2007 01:35 PM | By Paul Roberts" states that the U.S. Department of Justice characterized SPIFFs as kickbacks, and illegal if the purchaser is the government." To my reading, it does not state that.  I am not an expert and so decline to edit the claim, but I would suggest further citations or narrower meaning.

A spiff and a kickback are different things involving different parties. A spiff is a documented promotional payment from a manufacturer to an individual salesperson. These are legal and the income is taxable. A kickback is secret payment from a seller to an individual buyer without the buyer's employer's knowledge. Kickbacks are always fraudulent because they induce the buyer to make an inappropriate purchase at the expense of their employer for the sake of compensation.

It is possible that IT professionals in the Beltway are using spiff inappropriately as a euphemism for kickbacks. (CFMWiki1 (talk) 19:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC))

Is there really a reason to capitalize this word??
As in, "spiff", not "SPIFF". Can anyone cite a dictionary on this? 209.105.207.181 (talk) 19:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Quite right; "SPIFF" is ridiculous. I've corrected all uses. I've saved the section that lists acronyms, but noted that they are really backronyms.Ledelste (talk) 19:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It should be capitalized. It is an acronym and title. Even though the acronym has no official meaning, it is still proper to capitalize each letter of the word. bigware (talk) 17:22, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It is not an acronym, it is a slang word. Acronyms were not used in the 19th century and the attempts to make it one are a modern invention or backronym.Chemical Engineer (talk) 11:47, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism
Pieces of this article were lifted word for word from this page: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-spi2.htm

Archive.org has the page going back to 2001, and still having the "disentangle the threads" bit. http://web.archive.org/web/20010406073048/http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-spi2.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.138.71.30 (talk) 02:23, 28 October 2008 (UTC)