> If I have a problem, I can't wait days for them to call me back.
> Just last May, I waited over a week for Tech support to call. That is
> crap. Heck, I have said this before and will say it again, my company
> will pay, just like cisco charges, for good tech support. Heck, that is
> why we pay cisco $300 a year on a 2501. If I have a problem, I just call
> an 800 number and have not had to wait more than 2 hours to be called
> back. They will look at the router, even help set it up if you are having
> problems. That is what I want, that is what I expect.
>
Let's see... I pay Cisco $700 a year each on several 7000's. For that, I
get an engineer who calls me back eventually (usually within 2 days) and
spends 2 hours on the phone with me figuring out that he doesn't understand
the parts of the router software that relate to my problem, so, after we
spend about a day going back and forth with wrong answers, he escalates
my problem. Another 2-3 days later, I get a call back from an engineer
who claims to be an "expert" on the part of IOS I'm having trouble with.
This guy wastes about 3 more days of my time (router still isn't working)
trying various things that have nothing to do with what I want the router
to do, he escalates the ticket again. This time I finally get someone
who knows what I'm talking about and after 4 or 5 hours, I finally get
the router doing what it is supposed to. Total down time us usually on
the order of two weeks.
Livingston, on the other hand, needs to polish the customer interface
on the front end ("I don't know" is definitely not comforting), however,
when I have called, and tell them the ticket is CRITICAL, especially if
I follow it with email to Support@Livingston.COM which contains
CRITICAL: SEE TICKET xxx in the subject line, I generally get a response
in 30 minutes to 1.5 hours. Other calls have taken longer. However,
Livingston's backlog is not from a lack of funded technical support
positions. It is from a lack of qualified trained applicants, and
a refusal to hire the kind of morons I keep getting from Cisco who can't
actually help me with my problem.
> Livingston is coming out with ISDN. We are ready to buy, BUT not
> if I have to wait for TECH support. If you offer it, support it, heck
> start a Livingston GOLD, where we pay yearly and we know we are going to
> be helped. Overnight shipment of a down router/terminal server, like I
> said before, I have a hosed PM2ER. I know of Cisco sending out a router
> via Delta Express same day, Saturday to a Company, and this is not your
> large company, they own one cisco.
>
Hopefully you will understand eventually that all the money in the world
does not increase the number of qualified quality applicants.
> it is good stuff, I just want it supported
>
> Christian
>
> Yes, I know. If I only had 26 hours in a day... ;-0
>
>
I'll take slow quality technical support over time-consuming idiotic technical
support any day.
Owen