RE: (usr-tc) Support Contract survey
Frankly I'm surprised she's still employed with 3Com. She's the reason I don't buy support contracts anymore. But maybe she's just a symptom of a much larger problem. Matthew Stainforth || Technical Services Manager || BrunNet Inc.
-----Original Message----- From: Paul Farber [mailto:farber@admin.f-tech.net] Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 11:41 AM To: usr-tc@lists.xmission.com Cc: bruce_claflin@mw.3com.com; karl_swanson@mw.3com.com; thomas_goodman@mw.3com.com; george_ebert@mw.3com.com; glenn_gibney@mw.3com.com; irfan_ali@mw.3com.com Subject: Re: (usr-tc) Support Contract survey
Add my results:
NO I WILL NOT RENEW (see below) ANY SERVICE CONTRACT
and
NO I WILL NOT BE PURCHASING ANY NEW 3COM EQUIPMENT.
I just got off the phone with Ms. Michelle Catalano who said my $1200 support contract would not be honored... even though they got the money for it already.
I have 3 chassis at 3 locations and only *want* coverage for a specific site with specific needs. It's a simple chassis, 2 DSP's, 1 arc.... plain jane setup.
Needless to say I have contacted 3 ASCEND/LUCENT vendors and will not be purchasing ANY more 3Com equipment. Sorry 3Com.... that's 1 new site you won't be at (96 ports) and one site I will be converting (48 ports). Does the business unit understand that loosing $15K-20K over a $1200 software upgrade (who actually calls support anymore... I think we've all learned the 'value' of phone based support)
Since this message is being CC'ed to (hopefully) some understanding management at 3Com, there is a person on the xmission list (krish?) that has been worth thier weight in gold.... give that person a raise and maybe learn a bit from how that person does support us.
I will add the 2.0.51 DSP code seems to have calmed down the chassis a bit... to bad it took the 2.0.60 and 2.0.81 'tries' to get it.
Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:
OK...here are initial results of the support contract informal survey. I only heard from 13 people (including myself :)...a mere fraction of the number of people on the list in total. Keep sending the information...I'll continue to tabulate and have more updates as I hear from more people.
The current count is 9 people don't have support contracts, and 4 do.
Some notes:
- One "yes" only had software coverage even though they would have liked to have greater coverage. They had to settle for software-only because of the cost
- One "no" actually has coverage on a chassis, but only because that chassis was bought new and came with coverage...apparently you can't buy a chassis anymore without coverage...interesting loophole in the contract rules here. This person indicated that they would rather have *not* gotten the coverage on the contract as they thought it was a waste of money.
Many of the people that emailed me as a "no" mentioned it was the cost and/or the rules that prevented them from getting a contract.
I will re-iterate that I believe that the root of the problem stems from 3Com considering Customer Service as a "Business Unit". In other words, they want Customer Service to be a revenue positive part of 3Com. While my previous posting that discussed this was somewhat inaccurate (the Customer Service Organization, CSO, apparently doens't get the revenues from the support contracts, the business unit that sells the equipment - in the case of TC, its the Network Systems Business Unit - gets the revenues...the whole thought of trying to make Customer Service revenue positive ends up with an attitude that ends up screwing the customer.
I just recently went through the process of trying to obtain a service contract again...partially to try to determine if any improvements had been made to the process...partially to find out if the "Unbundled Service Options" on 3Com's web site would be useful here...and partially because we really would like to have some coverage on some of our equipment. The current status is that the support coverage rules are still in place (contracts purchased per-chassis rather than per-card, and all chassis at a site have to have the same coverage...of course last time we tried to have different coverage at different sites 3Com didn't honor it), the support options listed as sold items (ie, not special deals that are made for specific instances) were largely the same as they've been for the past 3 years. The best I got from the discussion was that service options could be discussed (ie, a special deal is how I understand this) if its "a sound business case that makes sense for the customer and for 3Com." Let me suggest that a sound business case for 3Com would be to not lose their customers which is what is happening...3Com is verging towards losing us as a customer even...and we've been a USRobotics/3Com customer for at least 5 years (35 Amp power supplied and dual analog 14.4 modems) -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456
- To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.
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On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Stainforth, Matthew wrote:
Frankly I'm surprised she's still employed with 3Com. She's the reason I don't buy support contracts anymore. But maybe she's just a symptom of a much larger problem.
Ahh... Michelle. I have never in my life been treated so rudely when trying to purchase something. I'm assuming she's there *because* of the attitude. She could argue chassis counts all day. Glad she doesn't have my home address ;) Charles
Matthew Stainforth || Technical Services Manager || BrunNet Inc.
-----Original Message----- From: Paul Farber [mailto:farber@admin.f-tech.net] Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 11:41 AM To: usr-tc@lists.xmission.com Cc: bruce_claflin@mw.3com.com; karl_swanson@mw.3com.com; thomas_goodman@mw.3com.com; george_ebert@mw.3com.com; glenn_gibney@mw.3com.com; irfan_ali@mw.3com.com Subject: Re: (usr-tc) Support Contract survey
Add my results:
NO I WILL NOT RENEW (see below) ANY SERVICE CONTRACT
and
NO I WILL NOT BE PURCHASING ANY NEW 3COM EQUIPMENT.
I just got off the phone with Ms. Michelle Catalano who said my $1200 support contract would not be honored... even though they got the money for it already.
I have 3 chassis at 3 locations and only *want* coverage for a specific site with specific needs. It's a simple chassis, 2 DSP's, 1 arc.... plain jane setup.
Needless to say I have contacted 3 ASCEND/LUCENT vendors and will not be purchasing ANY more 3Com equipment. Sorry 3Com.... that's 1 new site you won't be at (96 ports) and one site I will be converting (48 ports). Does the business unit understand that loosing $15K-20K over a $1200 software upgrade (who actually calls support anymore... I think we've all learned the 'value' of phone based support)
Since this message is being CC'ed to (hopefully) some understanding management at 3Com, there is a person on the xmission list (krish?) that has been worth thier weight in gold.... give that person a raise and maybe learn a bit from how that person does support us.
I will add the 2.0.51 DSP code seems to have calmed down the chassis a bit... to bad it took the 2.0.60 and 2.0.81 'tries' to get it.
Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:
OK...here are initial results of the support contract informal survey. I only heard from 13 people (including myself :)...a mere fraction of the number of people on the list in total. Keep sending the information...I'll continue to tabulate and have more updates as I hear from more people.
The current count is 9 people don't have support contracts, and 4 do.
Some notes:
- One "yes" only had software coverage even though they would have liked to have greater coverage. They had to settle for software-only because of the cost
- One "no" actually has coverage on a chassis, but only because that chassis was bought new and came with coverage...apparently you can't buy a chassis anymore without coverage...interesting loophole in the contract rules here. This person indicated that they would rather have *not* gotten the coverage on the contract as they thought it was a waste of money.
Many of the people that emailed me as a "no" mentioned it was the cost and/or the rules that prevented them from getting a contract.
I will re-iterate that I believe that the root of the problem stems from 3Com considering Customer Service as a "Business Unit". In other words, they want Customer Service to be a revenue positive part of 3Com. While my previous posting that discussed this was somewhat inaccurate (the Customer Service Organization, CSO, apparently doens't get the revenues from the support contracts, the business unit that sells the equipment - in the case of TC, its the Network Systems Business Unit - gets the revenues...the whole thought of trying to make Customer Service revenue positive ends up with an attitude that ends up screwing the customer.
I just recently went through the process of trying to obtain a service contract again...partially to try to determine if any improvements had been made to the process...partially to find out if the "Unbundled Service Options" on 3Com's web site would be useful here...and partially because we really would like to have some coverage on some of our equipment. The current status is that the support coverage rules are still in place (contracts purchased per-chassis rather than per-card, and all chassis at a site have to have the same coverage...of course last time we tried to have different coverage at different sites 3Com didn't honor it), the support options listed as sold items (ie, not special deals that are made for specific instances) were largely the same as they've been for the past 3 years. The best I got from the discussion was that service options could be discussed (ie, a special deal is how I understand this) if its "a sound business case that makes sense for the customer and for 3Com." Let me suggest that a sound business case for 3Com would be to not lose their customers which is what is happening...3Com is verging towards losing us as a customer even...and we've been a USRobotics/3Com customer for at least 5 years (35 Amp power supplied and dual analog 14.4 modems) -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456
- To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.
- To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.
- To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.
- To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.
participants (2)
-
Charles Sprickman -
Stainforth, Matthew