Re: Just curious

[DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Worse with no contract. If you use per incident support a 5:01 call on 
Friday likely results in a CE on site TUESDAY morning and no amount of 
crying or begging for help will change that. If they are not busy 
perhaps Monday, perhaps. But even they you must issue a P.O. for the 
maximum amount IBM thinks it could cost to repair (given labor and 
parts). Until you do that no dispatch. With per incident that is 24 
hours from the time they get the call and your P.O. so that 5:01 Friday 
call is an 8AM Monday call to them. Then add in the paperwork time and 
Tuesday is very likely. The P.O is so that if what looks simple turns 
into something 'Not Simple' they are holding your P.O. and thus can get 
payment.

Sad that they had to go that way but far too many folks were dropping 
support to save money then just paying only when problems occurred. This 
doesn't leave IBM any money to stock parts with or to keep CEs employed 
and trained. Worse it would tie up the ones they had at 'non-contract' 
sites when someone with a contract called and couldn't get help. This 
has probably been IBM's policy for over a decade now and we don't see 
very many customers relying on per incident support as a result!!

        - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 1/10/2018 9:54 AM, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:
> Yep try to save a couple of bucks by not having 24/7 hardware support so
> when 5:00 pm rolls around you just bought potentially 16 hours of downtime
> (or more) waiting because IBM actually honors it's agreement with the
> customer.  The customer got lucky this time that Rochester support even
> bothered to talk to you after 5:00pm, they were not obligated to.
>
> Moral to the story:  You get what you pay for.  24/7 support is cheap after
> just one failure on a production system during the evening or worse, over a
> weekend.
>
>
> --
> Jim Oberholtzer
> Agile Technology Architects
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Paul
> Nelson
> Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 8:28 AM
> To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion' <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: RE: Just curious
>
> Post mortem:
>
> The service tech who changed out the power supply claimed a card needed
> replacing, and the partitions had to be powered down. Of course, there were
> no cards in the Austin warehouse, so one was ordered from Dallas. She left
> at 5:00 at the end of her shift.
>
> A hardware guy from Rochester called at 6:00, and said he had been reviewing
> the notes on the PMR. He said that when the power supply failed, the system
> had stopped recognizing the card, and a reboot would wake the systems back
> up.
>
> Bing-badda-boom, and we were functional. We saved the muckety-mucks in
> "management" the $3,000 they were planning to spend on after hours support
> when the card finally arrived.
>
> And yes, several of these techs are actual contractors, not retired IBM'ers.
> This latest young lady has joined the ranks of the persona non grata who
> will no longer touch anything except the Wintel boxes.
>
> Paul Nelson
> Cell 708-670-6978
> Office 409-267-4027
> nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim
> Oberholtzer
> Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2018 7:31 AM
> To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
> Subject: RE: Just curious
>
> As the older CEs retire the quality has gone down, and you may in fact have
> had a CE that was not trained in the system except by watching on line
> videos and taking an open book on line test.  I doubt he was a contractor,
> at least there are not any up here (that were not IBM employees in the first
> place that retired and were brought back as contractors) but I would not be
> overly surprised.
>
>
> --
> Jim Oberholtzer
> Agile Technology Architects
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Paul
> Nelson
> Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2018 2:36 PM
> To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion' <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Just curious
>
> Is anybody else experiencing issues with the skill level of the IBM hardware
> service techs? It seems the Austin area CE's are getting worse by the month.
> We needed a power supply changed out, and were told it was hot swappable,
> but when the tech showed up, all 5 partitions on the frame had to be killed.
>
>
> Now, there's a code that won't go away until a card is replaced. We're not
> even sure if this tech is a real IBM employee or a subcontractor.
>
> Paul Nelson
> Cell 708-670-6978
> Office 409-267-4027
> nelsonp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> --
> This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
> To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe, unsubscribe,
> or change list options,
> visit: https://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
> or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx Before posting, please take a
> moment to review the archives at https://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.
>
> Please contact support@xxxxxxxxxxxx for any subscription related questions.
>
> Help support midrange.com by shopping at amazon.com with our affiliate link:
> http://amzn.to/2dEadiD
>
> --
> This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
> To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe, unsubscribe,
> or change list options,
> visit: https://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
> or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx Before posting, please take a
> moment to review the archives at https://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.
>
> Please contact support@xxxxxxxxxxxx for any subscription related questions.
>
> Help support midrange.com by shopping at amazon.com with our affiliate link:
> http://amzn.to/2dEadiD
>
>
> --
> This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
> To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe, unsubscribe,
> or change list options,
> visit: https://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
> or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx Before posting, please take a
> moment to review the archives at https://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.
>
> Please contact support@xxxxxxxxxxxx for any subscription related questions.
>
> Help support midrange.com by shopping at amazon.com with our affiliate link:
> http://amzn.to/2dEadiD