[AusNOG] Vendors back charging on support and maintenance.

[Ross Wheeler]

On Tue, 24 Apr 2018, Peter Tiggerdine wrote:

> I've just observed an interesting situation where a vendor is charging upto 18months "fee" to bring a device back into active maintenance and
> support. The customer purchase the kit secondhand. Naturally the customer is pushing back (don't blame them).

Back in the late 90's I'd purchased some (then) expensive routers from a 
vendor of a certain colour. A few months later, I had a problem, telstra 
were blaming my end, I couldn't find any config problem and called the 
vendor who declared that the device was "out of warranty" (3 months) and 
demanded service contracts not only for that router, but every other 
device (of the same colour) we owned.

(It was cheaper to dump the router and buy from someone with more moral 
scruples than the original, and I've never purchased or recommended 
equipment of this particular colour since).