I think Brian is on the right track here. Perhaps 3COM can split their service contracts into 2 categories - firmware download only, and full support with download and telephone support. Those of us new to the platform (myself included) might benefit from the convenience of knowing that phone support is available 24x7 when you're staring at a box not taking calls at 2AM. But once you get the hang of TC and know how to troubleshoot these things on your own (or at least with the added help of those on this list), you can drop the tel support, and just pay for code updates. Does any of this matter to those on this list that are complaining about 3COM's lack of timely response to code issues? Probably not. Should 3COM redirect it's efforts to resolving these issues? Yep. Should they perhaps head-up a small team (1 person) to field code enhancement and bug fix requests, both from an email/web input area on the 3COM ISP pages, but also through monitoring of this list and the totalcontol newsgroups? Absolutely. 3COM may already be doing this "behind the scenes", quietly tracking and logging this stuff, but it's apparent that the people who need to know the most that it's being done and being worked on, the ISP customers, don't know that someone has acknowledged the problem and it has been placed into an engineering queue. I think that things like this would greatly improve 3COM's image among it's ISP customers, and even more so if they acted expediently on these issues that trouble so many on this list. Give the telephone support staff access to the database created as a result of these pages (hell, give us access to these pages as well, even WITHOUT a contract). Tie the ER/SR releases to the database, so it's easier to identify which bug is fixed with which release. And most importantly, allowing us to view this database to obtain the status of a confirmed bug and it's up-to-date progress in getting resolved would be of tremendous benefit. To know that someone is actually WORKING on Jeff's SNMP issue by simply searching the database is comforting (knowing that it will be fixed QUICKLY is even better). Some of this status information may already be in the 3KB, but a dedicated database for TC code issues and status reports would be really great. Scot NJAccess -----Original Message----- From: owner-usr-tc@lists.xmission.com [mailto:owner-usr-tc@lists.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Brian Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 1999 9:45 PM To: usr-tc@lists.xmission.com Subject: Re: (usr-tc) 2.0.60 HDM Code On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Jeff Binkley wrote:
-> One of the few pleasures in life is telling the salesbot on the phone that I -> will NOT be renewing my support contract. -> -> For the amount it would cost to cover 2 chassis and a dozen DSP's, ARC's and -> NMC's they need to do alot better than they are now. -> -> They released NFAS code and OSPF beta code... whipee. Make the damned thing -> connect more reliabily and then worry about networking code (ala OSPF).
I too boycotted renewing my maintenance contract for almost a year for many of the same reasons you and others have expressed. I just downloaded all of the TC 3.6 stuff but am gunshy about upgrading the Hiperarc and DSP code. I got burned already on the 4.1.56-6 code that killed my webramps. I was actually on Ramp Networks website tonight and they have an engineering note specifically for TC w/HiPerArcs. They pretty much pointed the gun straight at 3Com. Back to the original point of your message I wonder how many of us have witheld revenue from 3Com over the maintenance contract issues ? I will say the process for purchasing the maintenance contract and getting it active was much much better this time (albeit I couldn't active it via the website due to some cgi problem) but the ole reliable fax machine came through with flying colors.
We have. I would be very happy to pay 3Com a fair price for maintenence contracts. We almost had a deal cinched and at the last minute they changed the price, and we never went with it. Once you are a certain size, and you have certain momentum, you are *always* buying dsp's every few weeks. So technically, if you just keep registering those numbers on totalservice, you will always be covered under 90 days support. This is bad for 3com though, so they really should fix the contract situation, so we can get real contracts. I just want software, I am not interested in there tech support. I have been working on TC hubs for years, setup dozens and dozens of them, and done just about everything worth doing on them. But I get subjected to calling into an 800 number, at 11pm, so that some guy who sounds half asleep can call me back with a piss poor (tired?) attitude, who probably has been working there like a few weeks, or months, and doesn't have anywhere near the experience I do on these hubs. "Did you try rebooting the chassis?"........... I feel I am in a constant battle with 3com, just to get code I have legitimate access too etc. I mean, if you buy a chassis that has TCS 3.5 on it, and you bought a support contract with TCS 3.5..........shouldn't your account still let you download the TCS 3.5 code forever? I mean, its not like they are giving you something you didn't already have........you paid for it, its not a newer version, its the version that was on the damn thing when you bought it! I can log into Cisco, and download any code on that site, no questions asked..........I can do that with a $250 2501 service contract. Do I screw Cisco? Hell no, because the contracts for *all* the stuff I have is just as good of a deal as the pricing on the 2501 contracts. You can bet that when people like myself need support contracts, its not because we don't know how to use the equipment, its because the stuff isn't working, we need fixes, we need to let 3com know it doesn't work.
Jeff Binkley ASA Network Computing
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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.