[AusNOG] Vendors back charging on support and maintenance.

[Peter Tiggerdine]

Brad, et al,

The vendor makes these update to fix defects in their product (largely
because of commercial revoke or legislative issues). Free loading would be
not paying and still expecting a service (unless theres a limited lifetime
warranty. Improve QA to stop returns and support calls. If this makes it
into the RMA pool that's the vendors problems, not customers.

as for the strawmen theory of car, house and content insurance, all three
of theses are covered if you're not at fault under the defendant's
insurance policy (accept in the act of god). Beyond that all three have
additional risks that a completely different to piece of kit or software.

Let's use oranges to compare to oranges, not apples.


Regards,

Peter Tiggerdine

GPG Fingerprint: 2A3F EA19 F6C2 93C1 411D 5AB2 D5A8 E8A8 0E74 6127

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 3:59 PM, Brad Peczka <brad at bradpeczka.com> wrote:

> Let's look at this using the context of your customer who hasn't been
> paying maintenance for a period of time.
>
> During the time where your customer hasn't had a support contract, the
> vendor has been developing fixes, enhancements, and revisions to the
> software used on the product. The vendor may have also developed hardware
> fixes to the product that are incorporated into the manufacturing process
> as a V02, V03, etc, product - no functionality change, but improved
> reliability. The Cisco Catalyst 3850 status button is one I can recall
> easily; I'm sure there are others, and these updated products will reach
> the RMA pool after a period of time.
>
> So - sure, from a customer side there's no problem. You pay the fee, you
> get the support. However, from the vendor side, the absence of maintenance
> fees from customers who instead pay for maintenance on a last minute/just
> in time basis essentially means they're freeloading off the development
> work that has occurred while they were outside of support. After-sales
> fixes throughout a product life are, to a large extent, paid for by
> customers with continuous maintenance contract, instead of customers who
> take the cheap route.
>
> As a customer, I hate paying for maintenance on gear that is as solid as a
> rock and unlikely to fail... but I'm exceedingly grateful that when I hit a
> bug, the vendor often already has an image with the fix for the bug that I
> can download and run. Or, if I have a hardware fault, I get a V08 model to
> replace my V01 model, with all of the engineering changes included. I also
> hate the idea of back-paying maintenance that I'll can never use just to
> get a device back under support, but that's the policy of the vendor and I
> as the customer have made a conscious decision to use that vendors product
> in preference to another for whatever reason I deemed best at the time.
>
> TL;DR = Support has a cost for both the customer and vendor. Pay your
> share, buy cold spares, or change to a vendor that better aligns with your
> commercial expectations.
>
> Regards,
> -Brad.
> ________________________________________
> From: AusNOG <ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net> on behalf of Karl Auer <
> kauer at biplane.com.au>
> Sent: Thursday, 26 April 2018 1:41 PM
> To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Vendors back charging on support and maintenance.
>
> On Wed, 2018-04-25 at 00:07 +0000, Nikolas Geyer wrote:
> > Yes, it’s pretty standard. It’s to stop people running hardware
> > without a maintenance contract and only buying one when they need to
> > do, for example, a RMA.
>
> Sorry, why is that a problem? If they pay the support fee, they should
> get the benefits. If they are not using the benefits, why should they
> pay the fee? On the flip side, they may not have paid support for ten
> years, but they also have not been costing the vendor anything.
>
> I see no problem with someone waiting until it is needed before paying
> the support fee.
>
> Am I missing something? What *is* the "vendor side of the problem"?
>
> Regards, K.
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
> http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
> http://twitter.com/kauer389
>
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