Re: IBM SupportLine

Scott,

  I have spoken to many at SupportLine during the process of getting
help and at other times. It is amazing the wide range of requests made
to them. Some people (seemingly you fit this mold) call only when 'the
smoke is rolling'. These folks are very resourcefull, skilled in
operations and administration and generally know their stuff.  Others
call because a printer won't print when there is a QSYSOPR message
indicating a forms jam.  Certainly people who call at that level 'get
their money's worth' on a monthly contract. You (and I) do not. Thus
there is an hourly contract where you can call when needed but only get
charged when you do.  When pricing a monthly contract IBM cannot know
which column you fit, or if you are somewhere in between.

  One thing I suggested was to use an IBM certification (System
Operator, System Administrator etc) to help determine where to price it,
or at the very least what level of help to provide initially.  It is
annoying to me (and the supportline person) when as a certified system
administrator I get asked to try 5 or 10 things that that I have already
tried and should have been expected to try. I get nowhere, supportline
wastes their time. So far my ideas have not been implemented :-( 

  - Larry

Scott Klement wrote:
> 
> Hello Bale Handleman,
> 
> My company bought 30 minutes of supportline time in 1995.  So far, I think
> we've used about 10 or 15 of those minutes.
> 
> I recently priced IBM SupportLine, when we bought out new RISC box, and
> set up hardware maintenance.   They no longer seem to have the option to
> buy a certain number of minutes -- you have to pay for a contract for a
> period of time -- I think it was a year, but my memory is fuzzy on that
> detail -- anyway the prices were just absurd, something like $1500/year
> for "prime shift" and $1900/year for "full shift".
> 
> When you consider that I've only used 15 minutes in the past 6 years,
> you can see that these prices are a bit crazy.  If I continued that
> trend, I'd be paying something like $200/minute. :)   If I need IBM
> support, I'll just pay the hourly rate....
> 
> By contrast, I wouldn't be caught dead without the hardware maintenance.
> My iSeries/400 is mission critical.  If the machine starts smoking, I want
> to know that I've got a trained export I can call!

-- 
Larry Bolhuis           | Cogito ergo mercari iSeries 
Arbor Solutions, Inc.   |
(616) 451-2500          |               (I think, therefore I buy iSeries.)
(616) 451-2571 -fax     |
lbolhuis@arbsol.com     |        #3  1951-2001
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