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.
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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Paul, I am not trying to disagree with you here and I agree 3 Com needs to wake up sometimes on how they treat customers. However Ascend/Lucent is going to eventually charge for support contracts, it will be no different when they do. All equipment manufacturers see this as a great source of income and they are all in it for the money so it is only a matter of time before all charge for it. Thank you, Clint R. Sparks ComQuest Internet Services csparks@cqc.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Farber" <farber@admin.f-tech.net> 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> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 10:41 AM 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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Will pay if it's reasonable. I don't see it as insurance, I see it as casting a vote of confidence in the company that they will improve the product and fill the need I have for their equipment. Look at the resolved issues on most sw releases... unless it says "improved v.90 performance" or "improved compatibly with lucent/rockwell chipsets" it is not generally worth the upgrade. I NEED those things, I will PAY for those things..... the support contract software is NOT doing it. Maybe the TC line is to broad.... maybe a multiservice platform is nice for large corporations but for small ISP's (the majority) I really don't need VOIP, or a nic that does frame (who has ever used the wan ports on a TC ARC NIC???) or dial out, or caller ID based access, or VPN. I need a RAS that takes calls (reliably) and routes them to my router. After about $60K of 3com equipment it's becoming clear that they are not the filling my need. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
Paul, I am not trying to disagree with you here and I agree 3 Com needs to wake up sometimes on how they treat customers. However Ascend/Lucent is going to eventually charge for support contracts, it will be no different when they do. All equipment manufacturers see this as a great source of income and they are all in it for the money so it is only a matter of time before all charge for it.
Thank you,
Clint R. Sparks ComQuest Internet Services csparks@cqc.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Farber" <farber@admin.f-tech.net> 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> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 10:41 AM 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.
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On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
Paul, I am not trying to disagree with you here and I agree 3 Com needs to wake up sometimes on how they treat customers. However Ascend/Lucent is going to eventually charge for support contracts, it will be no different when they do. All equipment manufacturers see this as a great source of income and they are all in it for the money so it is only a matter of time before all charge for it.
I just got a Cisco AS53192 to replace most of my 3Com gear. (I always maintain two types of NAS equipment for compatability reasons.) The pricing on the 8x5xNBD contract is $2730 per year. I think the 3Com price on a similiar contract is the same or more for 192 ports. Cisco will normally provide 24x7 support at no additional cost for network down emergencies even with the 8x5 contract. I'm pretty sure 3Com would charge the normal hourly or per incident charge for after hours calls. The 24x7x4 contract that includes 4 hour replacement is $4370 a year. Might seem a bit steep, but I don't think 3Com even offers 4 hour replacement. I can't afford to have 192 of my lines out of service oevernight or through a weekend. One long outage would probably wipe out any savings gained by not paying for the support. Brian - 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.
Thus spake Brian Elfert
The 24x7x4 contract that includes 4 hour replacement is $4370 a year. Might seem a bit steep, but I don't think 3Com even offers 4 hour replacement.
Yes, they do. -- 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.
Cisco get top dollar for name recognition... then they are pretty damned smart... I called up once for a problem with a 3640 I had.... the guy was all over it. Impressive. To bad for cisco thier gear dosen't fail much (in my case). IOS is a bear to learn... but that's what newsgroups and lists are for! I would happily pay for a service... if I got what I paid for. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Brian Elfert wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
Paul, I am not trying to disagree with you here and I agree 3 Com needs to wake up sometimes on how they treat customers. However Ascend/Lucent is going to eventually charge for support contracts, it will be no different when they do. All equipment manufacturers see this as a great source of income and they are all in it for the money so it is only a matter of time before all charge for it.
I just got a Cisco AS53192 to replace most of my 3Com gear. (I always maintain two types of NAS equipment for compatability reasons.)
The pricing on the 8x5xNBD contract is $2730 per year. I think the 3Com price on a similiar contract is the same or more for 192 ports. Cisco will normally provide 24x7 support at no additional cost for network down emergencies even with the 8x5 contract. I'm pretty sure 3Com would charge the normal hourly or per incident charge for after hours calls.
The 24x7x4 contract that includes 4 hour replacement is $4370 a year. Might seem a bit steep, but I don't think 3Com even offers 4 hour replacement. I can't afford to have 192 of my lines out of service oevernight or through a weekend. One long outage would probably wipe out any savings gained by not paying for the support.
Brian
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I know what you mean.......I used to love USRobotics products and their support, never used anything else since 1989, but since 3Com took over their support quality decreased noticeably. I had some minor issues when I lost my TCM accounting and radius software and needed to re-install it. Well, we spent $12,000 on their hardware and they can't provide me with an "old" version of the software (I'm not asking for the latest) without a service contract. We'll be adding another 48 ports shortly and you can bet it won't be a 3Com chassis. ---Marius
-----Original Message----- From: owner-usr-tc@lists.xmission.com [mailto:owner-usr-tc@lists.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Paul Farber Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 10:41 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.
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On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Paul Farber wrote:
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 can't beleive how they treat us. You know that happened to us, we paid several thousand dollars for some support on a bunch of chassis we placed an order for, and 3com would not honor it. It was a total mess. It made buying 3com equipment a nightmare. Our vendor ended up issuing us a credit............
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.
well, even forcing to have support on everything. I mean, it should be support everything in use. What about all the stuf I have on the shelf, not in production, why should I buy a support contract on that? They need to do their support per card, not this per chassis stuff.
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
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----------------------------------------------------- Brian Feeny (BF304) signal@shreve.net 318-222-2638 x 109 http://www.shreve.net/~signal Network Administrator ShreveNet Inc. (ASN 11881) - 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.
Well my 2 cents here as well, I know that none of us likes to pay for things we do not feel are fair or will use but it is like paying for car insurance, you may need it someday and it will be worth it believe me. Besides I never see anything about others charging for support but I have news just about all do. We use Cisco equipment and it is the same deal you have to buy a support contract or pay by the support call after the warranty period is up. I know there are some that do not charge but I can tell you that it will not last forever no matter what they tell you, it is an avenue for these equipment manufacturers to make extra income and they will all succumb to it eventually as it is easy money for them. Sometimes you just have to play the game even if you do not like it and believe me I do not like paying for support contracts but my number one goal is keeping my customers happy and I will pay for the contract to do so. Besides I have much worse problems with phone companies than equipment manufacturers, telcos are the real root of all ISP's problems. Thank you, Clint R. Sparks ComQuest Internet Services support@cqc.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Mcadams" <jeffm@iglou.com> 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> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 10:15 AM Subject: (usr-tc) Support Contract survey
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
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Thus spake Clint R. Sparks
Well my 2 cents here as well, I know that none of us likes to pay for things we do not feel are fair or will use but it is like paying for car insurance, you may need it someday and it will be worth it believe me.
You've not worked with this equipment for very long, have you? ;) Seriously though...a large number of the people on this list are quite capable of supporting ourselves on this equipment largely. We need hardware coverage of some specific cards...for IgLou, we need to cover DSP's, we don't need to cover Arc's really since we have some spares, and we *CERTAINLY* don't want to cover quads since they're pretty much disposable at this point.
Besides I never see anything about others charging for support but I have news just about all do. We use Cisco equipment and it is the same deal you have to buy a support contract or pay by the support call after the warranty period is up.
But with cisco, you can get a different level of coverage on each piece of equipment if you like...try doing that with 3Com. 3Com won't even honor it if you have different levels of coverage *at different sites* (as Paul Farber just pointed out...and has happened to us in the past...even after 3Com gets the money for it...that's borderline illegal there, breach of contract).
Besides I have much worse problems with phone companies than equipment manufacturers, telcos are the real root of all ISP's problems.
Heh...you'll get no argument from me on that one! :) -- 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.
Let me go on record saying this before I get hate mail, I do not believe it is proper for any equipment manufacturer to charge for support. We do not charge our customers for support and they only pay us $20 a month so I am against them charging for support contracts. However it is a game and I run a business and if having and needing one is how the game has to be played then I get one. No equipment manufacturer cares about whether any of us likes it, they are a business and in it for the bottom line. I don't like it when telcos charge for installs on PRI and T1 circuits as I feel ordering it should be enough but they do and hide behind their tariffs to justify it so we pay it. I had GTE recently charge me for a premise visit after I ordered two new PRI's and this is on top of paying the normal $600 install for each PRI, I called them on it and they said we had to come out didn't we? I said I would like to see you install a new circuit without coming out. Face it, all small ISP's are being screwed by any big business anyway they can find.
You've not worked with this equipment for very long, have you? ;)
3 Years and I have had my ups and downs.
Seriously though...a large number of the people on this list are quite capable of supporting ourselves on this equipment largely. We need hardware coverage of some specific cards...for IgLou, we need to cover DSP's, we don't need to cover Arc's really since we have some spares, and we *CERTAINLY* don't want to cover quads since they're pretty much disposable at this point.
I agree we to do not need 3 Coms help except when hardware fails and we need replacements.
But with cisco, you can get a different level of coverage on each piece of equipment if you like...try doing that with 3Com. 3Com won't even honor it if you have different levels of coverage *at different sites* (as Paul Farber just pointed out...and has happened to us in the past...even after 3Com gets the money for it...that's borderline illegal there, breach of contract).
Before I had a contract all kinds of problems getting 3 Com's help wanted to kick Total Controls out door but with a contract no complaints, keep in mind I have the full support contract and I always get the help I need or want. I guess my case is an exception to the rule from what you are saying, but it works for me so I cannot complain. If it did not I would complain believe me. One thing I do now when I do need to call 3 Com for support is I ask for the same person which helps a lot as he knows who I am which expedites things as he knows when I call we have already tried everything. Clint - 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.
An EXELLENT business idea just hit me. If a vendor had 'Card Replacement Plan'. IE, for X a month ($20-50) if your ARC/NMC/DSP goes south you call them and they overnight you (i mean really overnight. next day incl sat.) a replacement card while your's is under warranty repair. When you get your's back you return the NIC/NAC and you are in business. Face it.. most of us just want the hardware replacement and all new gear comes with 5 year warranty... unless you pay for support you have to wait 2-4 weeks for the repair. We would win as we get the next day card from a vendor (who would keep the code up to date) and the vendor would win cause $50 a month from 50 ISP's is $2500 a month.. more than ehough to keep cards in stock and mail them out. You pay $240-$600/year for your entire site coverage (for any/all cards) and you get what you want.. minimal downtime. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 - 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.
<rant on> I only partly agree with you. It should depend on the level of support required. Software updates for "a work in progress" should be free. Period. We paid for the hardware and software to run them. We should get updates that keep them running plain and simple. Setup support is and should be free. Advanced troubleshooting support should not be free as long as the documentation on how to do the troubleshooting is made availalble to the customer. When the telco is blaming your equipment for not working correctly when they changed an option in the switch which suddenly makes it not work and they lie to you about nothing changing in the switch, a support contract ought to be available if not at least some type of charge by incident method. If the problem proves out to be 3Com's, then they should eat the charges. If the problem is obviously user error, then the user should pay. If it's not clear as to whose fault it is, then they should split the bill. How do you administer that? It's a nightmare. What's fair and what's done aren't always equal. In this case, I agree with many who have said that 3Com is over charging the little guy with a few chassis's for support. Come on - if an ISP has one or three chassis, the amount of support given is not significantly more than that of one with 20. Why can I say that? Experience has shown us that as we gained more chassis's, so did our knowlege of how to operate them. We went from calling them at least once a week to a point where we are seriously considering not renewing our contract due to the fact that the front line engineers often just don't know as much as we do about the equipment and spending 2 hours on the phone with someone who may or may not know how to help just isn't worth it any more. Granted, on rare occasions we may get a Ron Childs quality person on the phone but that is very rare. There are a few really good people in the ISP support group but they are uncommon enough and our knowlege has grown enough that we're not sure that the support is required for anything other than software upgrades and notices about them. <rant off> In the meantime, we'll see what happens... Kevin On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
Let me go on record saying this before I get hate mail, I do not believe it is proper for any equipment manufacturer to charge for support. We do not charge our customers for support and they only pay us $20 a month so I am against them charging for support contracts. However it is a game and I run a business and if having and needing one is how the game has to be played then I get one. No equipment manufacturer cares about whether any of us likes it, they are a business and in it for the bottom line. I don't like it when telcos charge for installs on PRI and T1 circuits as I feel ordering it should be enough but they do and hide behind their tariffs to justify it so we pay it. I had GTE recently charge me for a premise visit after I ordered two new PRI's and this is on top of paying the normal $600 install for each PRI, I called them on it and they said we had to come out didn't we? I said I would like to see you install a new circuit without coming out. Face it, all small ISP's are being screwed by any big business anyway they can find.
You've not worked with this equipment for very long, have you? ;)
3 Years and I have had my ups and downs.
Seriously though...a large number of the people on this list are quite capable of supporting ourselves on this equipment largely. We need hardware coverage of some specific cards...for IgLou, we need to cover DSP's, we don't need to cover Arc's really since we have some spares, and we *CERTAINLY* don't want to cover quads since they're pretty much disposable at this point.
I agree we to do not need 3 Coms help except when hardware fails and we need replacements.
But with cisco, you can get a different level of coverage on each piece of equipment if you like...try doing that with 3Com. 3Com won't even honor it if you have different levels of coverage *at different sites* (as Paul Farber just pointed out...and has happened to us in the past...even after 3Com gets the money for it...that's borderline illegal there, breach of contract).
Before I had a contract all kinds of problems getting 3 Com's help wanted to kick Total Controls out door but with a contract no complaints, keep in mind I have the full support contract and I always get the help I need or want. I guess my case is an exception to the rule from what you are saying, but it works for me so I cannot complain. If it did not I would complain believe me. One thing I do now when I do need to call 3 Com for support is I ask for the same person which helps a lot as he knows who I am which expedites things as he knows when I call we have already tried everything.
Clint
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This is all good and well. But look at a typical support contract from 3Com. If you pay for 'next day replacement'... it's only next day if the failure happens between Monday-Thursday. If it breaks thursday night you will not have a part friday or sat... even though overnight delivery if available on sat. Friday-Sun.... next day is Tuesday. Sounds like overnight to me. Phone support.... nice that I can change the music on hold... and hold times are short... but the help on the other side is spotty at best. Plus it seems that not all 3com support reps have a modem to dial out on.. had to wait 20 minutes for a guy to configure his machine and get an open line... this is from a modem manufacturer!!! Put a modem in each workstation for gods sake. Last but not least... having to cover the entire enterprise for support. Hmmm.... I have 250+ ports, arcs and nmc cards... I have spares, I just want the software updates.... god knows the code is a work in progress. Why can CISCO charge $13 for IP software to run a router and not force me to cover every router? I should be able to pick and choose what I want when I want it. I'm sure there is a way to put the 2.0.81 software in a shopping cart for easy purchase. As for 'all free all the time'.. no, I don't believe in that either. I do believe that it's my money, and I will spend it on what I think is the BEST VALUE. Paying $3K a year for support which is not next day, spotty phone support and covering equipment that I don't want to cover is not a value at all. Word to the wise.... lurk on the ascent/lucent/cisco lists.... see what thier problems are..... you'll be suprised. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
Well my 2 cents here as well, I know that none of us likes to pay for things we do not feel are fair or will use but it is like paying for car insurance, you may need it someday and it will be worth it believe me. Besides I never see anything about others charging for support but I have news just about all do. We use Cisco equipment and it is the same deal you have to buy a support contract or pay by the support call after the warranty period is up. I know there are some that do not charge but I can tell you that it will not last forever no matter what they tell you, it is an avenue for these equipment manufacturers to make extra income and they will all succumb to it eventually as it is easy money for them. Sometimes you just have to play the game even if you do not like it and believe me I do not like paying for support contracts but my number one goal is keeping my customers happy and I will pay for the contract to do so. Besides I have much worse problems with phone companies than equipment manufacturers, telcos are the real root of all ISP's problems.
Thank you,
Clint R. Sparks ComQuest Internet Services support@cqc.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Mcadams" <jeffm@iglou.com> 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> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 10:15 AM Subject: (usr-tc) Support Contract survey
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
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I hear the support on the phone has improved. Man do I have some stories. Like some girl who just hung up on me because she was frustrated, or the times I called support at midnight, only for 3com to wake some poor guy up at his house, who calls me back half asleep trying to setup his laptop so he can help me.............man was it a nightmare, I use to dread that stuff. I use to wait 45min - 1.24 hours average, it was a mess On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Paul Farber wrote:
This is all good and well. But look at a typical support contract from 3Com.
If you pay for 'next day replacement'... it's only next day if the failure happens between Monday-Thursday. If it breaks thursday night you will not have a part friday or sat... even though overnight delivery if available on sat. Friday-Sun.... next day is Tuesday. Sounds like overnight to me.
Phone support.... nice that I can change the music on hold... and hold times are short... but the help on the other side is spotty at best. Plus it seems that not all 3com support reps have a modem to dial out on.. had to wait 20 minutes for a guy to configure his machine and get an open line... this is from a modem manufacturer!!! Put a modem in each workstation for gods sake.
Last but not least... having to cover the entire enterprise for support. Hmmm.... I have 250+ ports, arcs and nmc cards... I have spares, I just want the software updates.... god knows the code is a work in progress. Why can CISCO charge $13 for IP software to run a router and not force me to cover every router? I should be able to pick and choose what I want when I want it. I'm sure there is a way to put the 2.0.81 software in a shopping cart for easy purchase.
As for 'all free all the time'.. no, I don't believe in that either. I do believe that it's my money, and I will spend it on what I think is the BEST VALUE. Paying $3K a year for support which is not next day, spotty phone support and covering equipment that I don't want to cover is not a value at all.
Word to the wise.... lurk on the ascent/lucent/cisco lists.... see what thier problems are..... you'll be suprised.
Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
Well my 2 cents here as well, I know that none of us likes to pay for things we do not feel are fair or will use but it is like paying for car insurance, you may need it someday and it will be worth it believe me. Besides I never see anything about others charging for support but I have news just about all do. We use Cisco equipment and it is the same deal you have to buy a support contract or pay by the support call after the warranty period is up. I know there are some that do not charge but I can tell you that it will not last forever no matter what they tell you, it is an avenue for these equipment manufacturers to make extra income and they will all succumb to it eventually as it is easy money for them. Sometimes you just have to play the game even if you do not like it and believe me I do not like paying for support contracts but my number one goal is keeping my customers happy and I will pay for the contract to do so. Besides I have much worse problems with phone companies than equipment manufacturers, telcos are the real root of all ISP's problems.
Thank you,
Clint R. Sparks ComQuest Internet Services support@cqc.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Mcadams" <jeffm@iglou.com> 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> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 10:15 AM Subject: (usr-tc) Support Contract survey
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
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On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Paul Farber wrote:
want the software updates.... god knows the code is a work in progress. Why can CISCO charge $13 for IP software to run a router and not force me to cover every router? I should be able to pick and choose what I want
Cisco bundles the cost of the IP only IOS into the price of the router. The only reason they don't just include the IP only license in the box is because a lot of people need the other IOS licenses with more features, so they offer a full range of licenses to buy seperately. The $13 just covers the cost of the packaging and manufacturing for the license they send you. Brian - 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.
exellent point.... I can purchase what I want when I want on what I want to cover. If I need ip plus I can buy it.. not needing to cover the entire network. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Brian Elfert wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Paul Farber wrote:
want the software updates.... god knows the code is a work in progress. Why can CISCO charge $13 for IP software to run a router and not force me to cover every router? I should be able to pick and choose what I want
Cisco bundles the cost of the IP only IOS into the price of the router.
The only reason they don't just include the IP only license in the box is because a lot of people need the other IOS licenses with more features, so they offer a full range of licenses to buy seperately.
The $13 just covers the cost of the packaging and manufacturing for the license they send you.
Brian
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On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
Well my 2 cents here as well, I know that none of us likes to pay for things we do not feel are fair or will use but it is like paying for car insurance, you may need it someday and it will be worth it believe me.
To make the comparision more accurate, we need to note that the car insurance is 1/5 of the total sale price of the car, per annum. That nice stripped-down Mercedes winds up costing $10k per year. No, I don't think it's fair, or reasonable. Or worth it. - 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.
I will not pay 3com to guarantee that the product I buy works as they sold it. What I do is go nuts, complain like a mad man, demand support, bitch and moan till I get a totalservice password, download everything, store it on my hard drive, contact my vendor, demand they support, go nuts on them. It is 3com AND the vendor's fault that my stuff doesn't work as advertised and sold. They both allow products that are not ready (fully cooked) to make it to the street. - 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.
I don't expect things to be free. I expect to get what I pay for. I don't bitch and make people miserable... I take my money elsewhere. That hurts more. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Richard Stuplich wrote:
I will not pay 3com to guarantee that the product I buy works as they sold it.
What I do is go nuts, complain like a mad man, demand support, bitch and moan till I get a totalservice password, download everything, store it on my hard drive, contact my vendor, demand they support, go nuts on them.
It is 3com AND the vendor's fault that my stuff doesn't work as advertised and sold. They both allow products that are not ready (fully cooked) to make it to the street.
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To make the comparision more accurate, we need to note that the car insurance is 1/5 of the total sale price of the car, per annum. That nice stripped-down Mercedes winds up costing $10k per year.
No, I don't think it's fair, or reasonable. Or worth it.
Okay I agree but my equipment is allowing thousands of customers to log-in everyday and this is how I make my living so it is worth it to me. The ISP business is very competitive now a days and I cannot afford to have a piece of equipment go down and not get replacement parts for it quickly so I guess you have to weigh that against not having the support contract. I care about nothing more than keeping my customers happy, and everyone in this business knows full well that dialup customers are not going to care that you could not get good support from 3 Com because you did not want to pay for their ridiculous contract prices, they are going to want to know why you did not pay and when the lines will be back up. We can all be mad all we want about 3 Com's support contract prices but our customers are not going to be mad at 3 Com but at us for being down or having problems. If a person cannot get good support from 3 Com then I agree that they should switch to another equipment manufacturer like Ascend. Clint - 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.
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
To make the comparision more accurate, we need to note that the car insurance is 1/5 of the total sale price of the car, per annum. That nice stripped-down Mercedes winds up costing $10k per year.
Okay I agree but my equipment is allowing thousands of customers to log-in everyday and this is how I make my living so it is worth it to me. The ISP business is very competitive now a days and I cannot afford to have a piece of equipment go down and not get replacement parts for it quickly so I guess you have to weigh that against not having the support contract.
If you're worried about mission-critical equipment going down and not getting replacements quickly, you don't rely on service contracts anyway. You have spares in the closet. As you say, the ISP business is very competitive...and even "next day" replacement (when it actually IS next-day) is too long to wait if you're market share includes a large percentage of non-casual users. Too bad that 3com insists on forcing you to include your "sitting in a closet, unplugged" equipment in your service contract...effectively doubling the cost of it, and making it even less cost-effective. If only there was an alt.binaries.warez.3com.tc 'group. (: - 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.
hmm... lets see... in the last few months 3Com has released 3 new dsp code rev's. That means that stuff is leaving before tested and that your customers are getting poor service. My Jan stats showed a 27% drop rate in the first 3 minutes. The 2.0.51 fix seems to work now.. down to about 20% drop in the first 3 minutes. OSPF is a work in progress and the ARC code is being cluttered with services that ISP's don't really need.. VOIP, dial out. If you ever look in the full SNMP dump you'll see the programmers names.... yeah.... that will make the ARC run better.. any more useless crap in the code??? As for support..... if you are paying for 'next day replacement' you are being dooped... if your ARC breaks on Thursday at 9pm, you ain't getting a replacement till monday... tuesday more like it. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Clint R. Sparks wrote:
To make the comparision more accurate, we need to note that the car insurance is 1/5 of the total sale price of the car, per annum. That nice stripped-down Mercedes winds up costing $10k per year.
No, I don't think it's fair, or reasonable. Or worth it.
Okay I agree but my equipment is allowing thousands of customers to log-in everyday and this is how I make my living so it is worth it to me. The ISP business is very competitive now a days and I cannot afford to have a piece of equipment go down and not get replacement parts for it quickly so I guess you have to weigh that against not having the support contract. I care about nothing more than keeping my customers happy, and everyone in this business knows full well that dialup customers are not going to care that you could not get good support from 3 Com because you did not want to pay for their ridiculous contract prices, they are going to want to know why you did not pay and when the lines will be back up. We can all be mad all we want about 3 Com's support contract prices but our customers are not going to be mad at 3 Com but at us for being down or having problems. If a person cannot get good support from 3 Com then I agree that they should switch to another equipment manufacturer like Ascend.
Clint
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hmm... lets see... in the last few months 3Com has released 3 new dsp code rev's. That means that stuff is leaving before tested and that your customers are getting poor service. My Jan stats showed a 27% drop rate in the first 3 minutes. The 2.0.51 fix seems to work now.. down to about 20% drop in the first 3 minutes. Paul, do you believe this dropped call problem is DSP problem? We seen and heard from customers these complaints for sometime. We have never been able to pin this on anything. I would hate to think that the modems are simply dropping calls. I always blamed this on the telco. Does anyone else see this as a bad problem. It thought we were the only ones. Is this an industy standard for dialup? Do the Ascend units drop calls like this? - 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.
At 01:42 PM 02/02/2000 -0800, you wrote:
Paul, do you believe this dropped call problem is DSP problem? We seen and heard from customers these complaints for sometime. We have never been able to pin this on anything. I would hate to think that the modems are simply dropping calls. I always blamed this on the telco. Does anyone else see this as a bad problem. It thought we were the only ones. Is this an industy standard for dialup? Do the Ascend units drop calls like this?
I see dropped calls from time to time. If the client has the latest modem code installed on their end I have the customer insert a -v90=0, the problems go away. Doesn't sound like a telco problem to me. Sounds like a v.90 connect problem. -- Brice Ligget Chief Operations Officer Two Alpha Net is a complete Internet Service Provider based in Billings Montana. "Connect to the world" 406 628 1500 http://www.twoalpha.net - 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.
I'm going by the radius stats kept by cistron radius. I simple script tells me how many calls were recieved of a certian duration and what percent of total for the day.... yesterday was: 00:00 221 6.3 00:01 224 6.4 00:02 481 13.8 00:03 116 3.3 . . . 06:00 53 1.5 06:01 5 0.1 08:57 1 0.0 Total calls: 3488 Of the 1042 call less than 4 minutes, 487 I should have been there (an ISDN cusotmer checks mail every 5 minutes, that's 555 unnder 4 minutes.. of a 15% drop rate in the first 4 minutes of a call. The recorded diconnect reason in radius is 'User-Request' or 'Carrier-Loss'. both to generic to be of any value. Someone said you can trap the diconnect reason.... but to date I have not got it to work. I can trap auth errors... but not disconnect reasons. But i'm working on it. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Terry Kennedy wrote:
hmm... lets see... in the last few months 3Com has released 3 new dsp code rev's. That means that stuff is leaving before tested and that your customers are getting poor service. My Jan stats showed a 27% drop rate in the first 3 minutes. The 2.0.51 fix seems to work now.. down to about 20% drop in the first 3 minutes.
Paul, do you believe this dropped call problem is DSP problem? We seen and heard from customers these complaints for sometime. We have never been able to pin this on anything. I would hate to think that the modems are simply dropping calls. I always blamed this on the telco. Does anyone else see this as a bad problem. It thought we were the only ones. Is this an industy standard for dialup? Do the Ascend units drop calls like this?
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I may not have responded to your survey so I am doing so now... We do not have support at this time and are very unlikely to do so at the prices charged vs. service rendered. We get our support from vendors, and access to software updates as a result of continuing purchases for additional hardware (primarily DSP's). If support were affordable we would purchase it tomorrow. I like living with a safety net, but I won't pay outrageous prices for it. I also noted someone talked about a per incident charge, but I was rejected at 3Com tech support some months ago if I wouldn't buy the big contract on the spot. There was no offer for per incident support. I use per incident support form Microsoft and find it to be very effective, though I have tried per incident support for Linux and other applications with less success. I think that is because of how long M$ has been doing it, the others will catch up very quickly. Per incident support is easy money anyway. When the network is down, administrators typically have an open checkbook to get the problem resolved. That same checkbook is notoriously difficult to crack when things are working fine. I don't understand why I can buy a support contract the lets me talk to the support folks for a single price. Whether I have one or twenty chassis's, I'm typically only going to ask a question once then apply it to all chassis. The same is with the software upgrades. The 24 hour replacement policy on hardware I can understand being a per chassis charge. Mark Thornton San Marcos Internet, Inc. 512-393-5300 - 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.
Thus spake Mark Thornton
I may not have responded to your survey so I am doing so now...
OK...got it, thanks!
I don't understand why I can buy a support contract the lets me talk to the support folks for a single price. Whether I have one or twenty chassis's, I'm typically only going to ask a question once then apply it to all chassis. The same is with the software upgrades. The 24 hour replacement policy on hardware I can understand being a per chassis charge.
Amen! And if you have more chassis, you're likely not going to have to call support as often in the first place since you're likely more knowledgeable about the equipment to begin with! I can deal with a per-chassis charge on hardware replacement...I'd *prefer* it to be per-card...let's face it, its easier to get serial nubmers of cards than it is for a chassis anyway...serial number can be retrieved via SNMP...the chassis can't. And being on a per-card basis, I could cover DSP's in a chassis, but not cover the quads in the same chassis. I think per-card is a better solution for 3Com as well as for 3Com's customers...I just totally baffles me that they haven't gone this way. -- 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.
speaking of serial numbers, is their a place on 3com's site you can go and view what serial numbers they have on file for you? so that we can at least see where they are coming from? On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:
Thus spake Mark Thornton
I may not have responded to your survey so I am doing so now...
OK...got it, thanks!
I don't understand why I can buy a support contract the lets me talk to the support folks for a single price. Whether I have one or twenty chassis's, I'm typically only going to ask a question once then apply it to all chassis. The same is with the software upgrades. The 24 hour replacement policy on hardware I can understand being a per chassis charge.
Amen! And if you have more chassis, you're likely not going to have to call support as often in the first place since you're likely more knowledgeable about the equipment to begin with!
I can deal with a per-chassis charge on hardware replacement...I'd *prefer* it to be per-card...let's face it, its easier to get serial nubmers of cards than it is for a chassis anyway...serial number can be retrieved via SNMP...the chassis can't. And being on a per-card basis, I could cover DSP's in a chassis, but not cover the quads in the same chassis. I think per-card is a better solution for 3Com as well as for 3Com's customers...I just totally baffles me that they haven't gone this way. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456
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----------------------------------------------------- Brian Feeny (BF304) signal@shreve.net 318-222-2638 x 109 http://www.shreve.net/~signal Network Administrator ShreveNet Inc. (ASN 11881) - 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.
Sorry for the mispellings in the previous post. I am on too many drugs for the flu that I'm not making much sense here in the office. At the bottom of the previous posting I meant to say that I DON'T understand why the ability to talk to a tech is tied to the total number chassis/slots I own and are paying support for. Mark Thornton San Marcos Internet, Inc. 512-393-5300 - 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.
Yes the whole support contract issue is really a shame. Countless times I have *tried* to get support contracts, but 3com will not take my money, they don't want it. It comes down to the wire, and then at that last minute they change the rules. We have used 3Com Total Control for many years. All we need the contracts for is the software support. We buy a chassis at least every 2 months anyways, so we are always covered under the 90 day support blanket that comes with each chassis..........we could keep this up forever, and 3com won't make a dime. Or they can come out with a decent offer. I have support contracts on everything except the 3com stuff we own. Cisco, Foundry, Ascend......they didn't have problems with support contracts, only 3com. And those of us without contracts, alot of us have been using this stuff for 4 or 5 or more years. We are not the ones calling the support teams and using up 3 hours on a tech call for simple answers. We just want coverage. Brian 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
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----------------------------------------------------- Brian Feeny (BF304) signal@shreve.net 318-222-2638 x 109 http://www.shreve.net/~signal Network Administrator ShreveNet Inc. (ASN 11881) - 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.
On Wed, 2 Feb 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:
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)
Man, wasn't USR sweet stuff back when that was state-of-the-art. *sigh* - 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.
Here's my take -- NO I will not renew the one contract I have for reasons already mentioned multiple times: having to buy contracts for everything, paying for working code when I aready paid for it, I dont need the support thanks to you guys and it's much cheaper to keep spare equipment than to pay for a promise of next day delivery. It only cost's 10000 for a complete spare unit. What I will do is continue to buy equipment and every 90 days or so I can have access to the total control site. I will continue to beat up my suppliers and make them BREAK THE RULES! rather have myself break them. Little gray area there for ya! As far as going with Ascend, as if that was even a choice at stage, I don't know ascend and couldn't comment on thier quality or not. Grass is always greener?? I see no point in getting all pissed off at 3com, Let them do what they do and the market will take care of the rest. If they really do such a lousy job then they will fade like so many before them. On another point, I had a 3com "engineer" comeon-site to help. He wasn't much more than an installation tech. He got sent home. What we do is find the brightest 3 guys on this list and hire them to come on-site. just my 1 Cent. -----Original Message----- From: owner-usr-tc@lists.xmission.com [mailto:owner-usr-tc@lists.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Jeff Mcadams Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2000 7:16 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: (usr-tc) Support Contract survey 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.
The current count is 9 people don't have support contracts, and 4 do.
Hmmm, must have missed all this... We're a big NO. We had a contract, which 3COM were unable to honour as per the terms when we needed it. They gave us a full credit for the contract, and then 12 months later sent us to the collectors for not paying it (and then tried to collect in US funds, not AUD).
- 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
I can go along with that. It's cheaper for me to keep a spare chassis on hand myself than it is to pay 3COM for a contract. As for software - we're Quad/NETserver based. There doesn't seem to be any interest at 3COM towards fixing the interoperability problems reported here, nor will there be any new NETserver code, so why would I want even software support?
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."
ie, if you're as big as AOL, we'll cut you a deal :-)
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)
We're seriously considering our options as well - it's not very likely that we'll be upgrading to HiPer gear. Probably move to Cisco instead, which is what our interstate office use. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bob Purdon, Ground Floor, Marine Board Building Technical Manager (Tas/Vic), 1 Franklin Wharf, Tas 7000 Southern Internet Services. +61 (3) 6234 7444 - 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.
OK, I'll jump in here too. We don't have support contracts. Never have. I would like to get software support, maybe, if it was reasonably priced... so far, we've been buying hardware at least every 90 days anyway so it hasn't yet been an issue. The cost of used cards has dropped to the point where it doesn't make sense to get hardware maintenance -- it'd be cheaper just to stockpile spares, then get the dead things repaired if they're under the 2 year hardware warranty.
From what people have been saying, even if I bought a contract, it probably wouldn't be honored anyway. :)
On the other hand, we've never tried calling 3Com, execpt when we had hardware die under warranty. The first was our very first Dual PRI (August 1997) that was DOA; they overnighted a new one. We had an NMC die later, which they spent a month repairing, but that's OK. I have a DSP that needs fixing now; we'll see how that goes... We've never called them for software support -- this mailing list mostly eliminates the need for that. For configuration stuff, I've usually been able to search around and figure it out myself. We've just about rewritten all of TCM (and soon HARM) in Perl anyway. :) We're sticking with it because from what I understand, despite all the problems people have with v.90, everyone else's stuff is worse. EVERY VENDOR has v.90 problems of SOME sort. Ascend has problems too, Cisco does, Livingston did... you'd just trade one set of problems for another. I also hate Ascend's management interface, and their, uh, "unique" ideas about how SNMP should work. Our competitors here use Ascend and Cisco (except AOL which is 3Com) and I'm *not* seeing a lot of people say they get more reliable connects there. There's only so much that can be done on the server to compensate for a broken client (Rockwell HCF)... Mike Andrews (MA12) * mandrews@dcr.net * http://www.bit0.com/ VP, sysadmin, & network guy, Digital Crescent Inc, Frankfort KY Internet services for Frankfort, Lawrenceburg, Owenton, Shelbyville "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." 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
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On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Mike Andrews wrote:
We've just about rewritten all of TCM (and soon HARM) in Perl anyway. :)
And you'll soon be releasing same to us all under the GPL or BSD license? *grin* *hopeful, puppyface look* *drool* - 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.
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Lon R. Stockton, Jr. wrote:
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Mike Andrews wrote:
We've just about rewritten all of TCM (and soon HARM) in Perl anyway. :)
And you'll soon be releasing same to us all under the GPL or BSD license? *grin* *hopeful, puppyface look* *drool*
http://www.dcr.net/~mandrews/usrtoys has what's done so far. Jeff Mcadams and I are working on an all-in-one tool but neither of us has had time to sit down and work on it lately... :p Mike Andrews (MA12) * mandrews@dcr.net * http://www.bit0.com/ VP, sysadmin, & network guy, Digital Crescent Inc, Frankfort KY Internet services for Frankfort, Lawrenceburg, Owenton, Shelbyville "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things." - 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.
We have a support contract for both hard- and software on all our chassis; but that's because we're Cornell and we love to waste money. 8-) Seriously, though, the support contract has pulled my ham out of the fire more than once. What we have is a basic contract: I have broken card, I call 3Com, they pass me on to Logistics, they send me new card, I send them bad card. All this takes about a day. I rarely call for configuration/software questions because this list seems to cover the gambit and beyond. Otherwise, I usually am able to figure it out myself. I also rarely have half the problems you all seem to have; probably because I'm not doing half the wacked-out stuff you all are. 8-) ********************************************************* Michelle M. Mogil Network and Computing Systems 721 Rhodes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 vox: (607) 255-0516, fax: (607) 255-8420 email: mmm3@cornell.edu ********************************************** - 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.
On Tue, 8 Feb 2000 mmm3@cornell.edu wrote:
We have a support contract for both hard- and software on all our chassis; but that's because we're Cornell and we love to waste money. 8-)
Seriously, though, the support contract has pulled my ham out of the fire more than once. What we have is a basic contract: I have broken card, I call 3Com, they pass me on to Logistics, they send me new card, I send them bad card. All this takes about a day. I rarely call for configuration/software questions because this list seems to cover the gambit and beyond. Otherwise, I usually am able to figure it out myself. I also rarely have half the problems you all seem to have; probably because I'm not doing half the wacked-out stuff you all are. 8-)
The thing is, the hiper stuff is so new, its all still under manufacturers warranty anyways, its just not next day service. So if you buy a DSP and it dies, you can get a replacement whether you have a support contract or not............just not as quick, maybe like 10+ day turn around. Brian
********************************************************* Michelle M. Mogil Network and Computing Systems 721 Rhodes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 vox: (607) 255-0516, fax: (607) 255-8420 email: mmm3@cornell.edu **********************************************
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----------------------------------------------------- Brian Feeny (BF304) signal@shreve.net 318-222-2638 x 109 http://www.shreve.net/~signal Network Administrator ShreveNet Inc. (ASN 11881) - 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.
The thing is, the hiper stuff is so new, its all still under manufacturers warranty anyways, its just not next day service. So if you buy a DSP and it dies, you can get a replacement whether you have a support contract or not............just not as quick, maybe like 10+ day turn around.
Brian
Which is why I insist on the business office buying me an extra one or two of each type of card that I keep in a set-up chassis, all loaded with latest code and parameters, for hot spares. ********************************************************* Michelle M. Mogil Network and Computing Systems 721 Rhodes Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 vox: (607) 255-0516, fax: (607) 255-8420 email: mmm3@cornell.edu ********************************************** - 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.
I really don't want to learn a new platform.... I would like to stay all TC.. they do work well once the code is settled down. I like the units, their BASIC design and pricing. But when 3Com puts thier fingers all over the support end... it seems that they want to make life difficult 'just cause they can'. Paul Farber Farber Technology farber@admin.f-tech.net Ph 570-628-5303 Fax 570-628-5545 On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Mike Andrews wrote:
OK, I'll jump in here too.
We don't have support contracts. Never have.
I would like to get software support, maybe, if it was reasonably priced... so far, we've been buying hardware at least every 90 days anyway so it hasn't yet been an issue.
The cost of used cards has dropped to the point where it doesn't make sense to get hardware maintenance -- it'd be cheaper just to stockpile spares, then get the dead things repaired if they're under the 2 year hardware warranty.
From what people have been saying, even if I bought a contract, it probably wouldn't be honored anyway. :)
On the other hand, we've never tried calling 3Com, execpt when we had hardware die under warranty. The first was our very first Dual PRI (August 1997) that was DOA; they overnighted a new one. We had an NMC die later, which they spent a month repairing, but that's OK. I have a DSP that needs fixing now; we'll see how that goes...
We've never called them for software support -- this mailing list mostly eliminates the need for that. For configuration stuff, I've usually been able to search around and figure it out myself. We've just about rewritten all of TCM (and soon HARM) in Perl anyway. :)
We're sticking with it because from what I understand, despite all the problems people have with v.90, everyone else's stuff is worse. EVERY VENDOR has v.90 problems of SOME sort. Ascend has problems too, Cisco does, Livingston did... you'd just trade one set of problems for another. I also hate Ascend's management interface, and their, uh, "unique" ideas about how SNMP should work. Our competitors here use Ascend and Cisco (except AOL which is 3Com) and I'm *not* seeing a lot of people say they get more reliable connects there. There's only so much that can be done on the server to compensate for a broken client (Rockwell HCF)...
Mike Andrews (MA12) * mandrews@dcr.net * http://www.bit0.com/ VP, sysadmin, & network guy, Digital Crescent Inc, Frankfort KY Internet services for Frankfort, Lawrenceburg, Owenton, Shelbyville "Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things."
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
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participants (15)
-
Brian -
Brian Elfert -
Brice Ligget -
Clint R. Sparks -
Jeff Mcadams -
Kevin Benton -
Lists -
Lon R. Stockton, Jr. -
Marius Kirschner -
Mark Thornton -
Mike Andrews -
mmm3＠cornell.edu -
Paul Farber -
Richard Stuplich -
Terry Kennedy