On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Jeff Binkley wrote:
Unless I am mistaken they do offer software only contracts. I've seen them on Tech Data's price listing. They are generally less than half of the full service contracts.
They are still pricey. And on top of the price, we started getting harrassing phone calls from some lackey in the 'service contract' department saying: -rude 3Com lady: "Are you SUUUURE that you only have X chassis?" -me: "Yes. That's why I bought X contracts." -rude 3Com lady: "Well you HAVE to buy a contract for each chassis" -me: "Yes." -rude 3Com lady: "You're SUUURE you only have X chassis?" -me: "Tell you what. Put me down for one, I'm selling the rest of this crap off." I didn't even buy direct from 3Com, but via a reseller. They apparently have the time and money to put losers like this on the phone to harass customers about the number of contracts they have versus the number of chassis they've purchased in the last 3 years. What a waste. What arrogance. I'll mention also that I have contracts (24x7x4) on our high-end Cisco routers that cost LESS than putting full support with no "spare-in-the-air" support on all our TCH stuff. And I've been told by numerous Cisco employees; support, sales, engineering that they let people slide on most support/software issues. They frown on 'version jumping' where you go and thieve say IOS w/Firewall support when you bought basic IP, but I've had so many instances where I've received support/software on equipment with no contract. I've even told the guy on the phone "I have no contract" and the basic response is "We want you to be happy. Your hardware fried? We'll send you new... You need IOS 12.x to fix this bug? Here it is." Why can't 3Com adopt at least some of this attitude? It's not like Pilgrim is feature-packed like IOS, we're all just looking for solid connects and standard routing features... Charles
Jeff Binkley ASA Network Computing
U>I think Brian is on the right track here. Perhaps 3COM can split their U>service contracts into 2 categories - firmware download only, and full U>support with download and telephone support.
U>Those of us new to the platform (myself included) might benefit from U>the convenience of knowing that phone support is available 24x7 when U>you're staring at a box not taking calls at 2AM. But once you get the U>hang of TC and know how to troubleshoot these things on your own (or U>at least with the added help of those on this list), you can drop the U>tel support, and just pay for code updates.
U>Does any of this matter to those on this list that are complaining U>about 3COM's lack of timely response to code issues? Probably not. U>Should 3COM redirect it's efforts to resolving these issues? Yep. U>Should they perhaps head-up a small team (1 person) to field code U>enhancement and bug fix requests, both from an email/web input area on U>the 3COM ISP pages, but also through monitoring of this list and the U>totalcontol newsgroups? Absolutely. 3COM may already be doing this U>"behind the scenes", quietly tracking and logging this stuff, but it's U>apparent that the people who need to know the most that it's being U>done and being worked on, the ISP customers, don't know that someone U>has acknowledged the problem and it has been placed into an U>engineering queue.
U>I think that things like this would greatly improve 3COM's image among U>it's ISP customers, and even more so if they acted expediently on U>these issues that trouble so many on this list. Give the telephone U>support staff access to the database created as a result of these U>pages (hell, give us access to these pages as well, even WITHOUT a U>contract). Tie the ER/SR releases to the database, so it's easier to U>identify which bug is fixed with which release. And most importantly, U>of allowing us to view this database to obtain the status a confirmed U>of bug and it's up-to-date progress in getting resolved would be U>tremendous benefit. To know that someone is actually WORKING on Jeff's U>SNMP issue by simply searching the database is comforting (knowing that U>it will be fixed QUICKLY is even better). Some of this status U>information may already be in the 3KB, but a dedicated database for TC U>code issues and status reports would be really great.
U>Scot U>NJAccess
CMPQwk 1.42 9999
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