Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!agate!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!apollo!tim From: tim@apollo.HP.COM (Timothy R. Giebelhaus) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: the deafening silence (and archive sites) Summary: How to get help, ADUS worries, etc. Message-ID: <462f7f81.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> Date: 12 Oct 89 16:15:00 GMT References: <1989Oct5.224148.19484@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> <1341@clyde.Concordia.CA> <1614@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> Sender: root@apollo.HP.COM Reply-To: tim@apollo.HP.COM (Timothy R. Giebelhaus) Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA Lines: 87 I want to stress that I am talking for myself and not necessarily Apollo/HP in the first part of this article. Like Dave E. says, help over the news system is a privilege, NOT a right. The people in R&D are being extremely kind in donating their time to helping people with their problems directly. It is not something they are required to do. It is customer service's job to field questions from the general public. The people in customer service who answer questions over news are being kind in that that they are not checking to see who payed a service contract and they are not given credit for the time they spend giving the answer. Now, this may be a problem. Getting help over news seems to be something which more than a few customers desire. There are some problems with this though. Apollo/HP can't afford to give unlimited free help to every person who has bought their machines. I'm sure everyone sees that Apollo/HP would not be in bussiness for very long at all if they attempted to give all this free help. So, what Apollo/HP and other companies do is offer service contracts. This is a method of recovering the cost of giving help to the customers who buy the machines. The service contract is necessary so the company can stay profitable and still offer help. If the company is not profitable, the company ceases to exist. Now the company needs some method of verifing that a customer has a service contract before helping them... else why would the customer buy the service contract. If news is used to answer questions, there is no way to verify that the customer has a service contract and so a service contract is no longer necessary for the customer. I had seen it written in one of the articles that the customers have a right to have a working machine and thus, it was implied, they have a right to all the free help necessary in order to get the machine working. No computer vendor would be so foolish to try to sell something as complicated as a workstation and promise that it works 100%. The workstation is sold with problems (many of them are documented at the time of the sale). The customer is then offered a service contract to help take care of the problems the workstation does have. Without the service contract or any software update rights, the software stays as is bought. All companies do this... at least all that are still in business. It is back to the free help, no contract, no profit, no company problem. Please feel free to use the news, but please remember it is not an offical way of getting help. Customer service is the offical way of getting help. If anyone has suggestions for how to make news help practical, please let me know and I'll make sure it is seriously considered by Apollo/HP management. As for ADUS, it is not owned by Apollo/HP. Thus, nothing will happen to it that ADUS does not wish to happen to it. It is true, however, that Apollo does make donations to ADUS which they may or may not stop doing. In such a case dues or some other fund raising method would be necessary to maintain ADUS. As Apollos and HP machines become the same, I would see joining the HP organization as a plus... but that is just the way I see it. Having said all this, let me say that all of the above is my personal view and may or may not be anything my company agrees with. The below, I believe, I can say officially. IF YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE SOFTWARE SUPPORT IN NORTH AMERICA, please give me a call, and I will help you out. If you are in the North Central region (North Dakota to Pittsburg to Kentucky to Kansas) I can help you out direclty. If you are outside the region, I can set you up with people who can help you. I am not saying, I can give you things outside of your contract. The resources do not exist for that. I'll work very long hours till you do get the service you are buying, though. You can reach me at: Tim Giebelhaus Apollo Computer 7900 International Dr. Bloomington, MN 55425 Phone: (612) 854-5791 FAX: (612) 854-7191 Voice mail: (800) 631-3511 x9557 E-mail: tim@apcimsp.uucp tim@apollo.hp.com UUCP: uunet!hi-csc!giebelhaus ARPA: hi-csc!giebelhaus@umn-cs.arpa Nobody I know admits to sharing my opinions. I don't even have a pet which will share my opinion.