Actualy I think he was talking about software and not a submission service per say but..
...it could be that he dosn't have the time. It could be that he dosn't know what search engines are worth submiting to other than the top 3 or 4. Many other engines get lots of traffic. Most will eventualy spider sites that are dmoz listed but what if you don't get into dmoz? Over 50% of submissions to dmoz are rejected. Many, simply because the user submited to the wrong catagory. Many because the dmoz editor didn't like the sites content value. I can cut my own lawn, but I pay a kid $15 a week to do it.
I agree that these submission sites that claim to submit to hundreds of thousands of sites are a waste of time and money.
However, some submission services, submit to just over 100 of the major engines for a very reasonable price. They also take care of all the spam that comes from these engines. They produce a detailed report in any format you want that shows the sites they submited to. All for like...say...$9.95
...Yes SEO is a different story...
But before they do any submiting they create a report showing what the se spiders are currently seeing on your site, they create a report on what should be done to the site's head & body, so that you not only get listed, but get ranked highly once you have good, content relevant, inbound oneway links. They create a report showing where you rank now in google for each of your sites important keywords and they include the submission service for say...like...49.95
So yes all of this can be done by anyone with the right knowledge and time.