RE: [cobalt-users] Watch out for Sun support

["Dean Hall" <dean@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> Am I the only one who thinks this is outrageous and I work 
> for them, surely it should be per half hour or such.  Does 
> anyone have dealings with any other charged for support to 
> compare.  I would like to know.
> 
> > Just a note on sun support.  The $95.00 charge is PER 
> QUESTION. They 
> > say per incident, but it is per question!!!!
> >
> >
> > be careful when calling them!
  
I don't believe Sun support is outrageous.

I have never worked for Sun or Cobalt, and don't now work in
tech support, but I have worked in tech support for other 
large companies.  Our practices seemed consistent with 
others in the industry.

Two ways to charge for tech support (not the only ways) are 
time and materials (by the hour), or per incident.  From a 
customer perspective, over the long haul, I don't know that 
one is any better than the other.

An incident corresponded to a problem, not a phone call.  For 
instance, a customer calls and wants help with the system 
continuously rebooting.  During the phone conversation, the 
customer says, "... also, my backups are not working." and wants 
help with this problem also.  This would have been considered a 
different problem, a new trouble ticket would have been opened 
and for "per incident" billing, yep, there is a new charge.

Suppose the continuous reboot problem was a long involved process 
of tech support collecting information, replicating the problem 
in their lab, discovering the customer had goofed something up, 
telling the customer how to fix it.  At $95 per incident, the 
customer got a real bargain, the tech support ate the costs of 
whatever man-hours were involved.

On the other hand, if the problem took 10 minutes to resolve, the 
tech support got a break and the customer paid $9.50 per minute.


---- 
Dean Hall at Tactix ReEngineering ( dean@xxxxxxxxxx ) 
503 520-9699  http://www.tactix.com 

>