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Looking For Better Linux Customer Support?
Deven Phillips, CISSP asks: "Recently, the company that I work for bought some VA Linux servers for our network and Web site. I was the one who recommended VA, due to the idea that they would give good technical support. When we purchased the servers, we were a bit dismayed by the fact that VA would not install Mandrake on our servers. Never to be daunted, we ordered the servers, and installed Mandrake ourselves. One of the servers (our file server to be) wouldn't load, wouldn't boot, and wouldn't even give us a good error indication. This is exactly why we chose VA, customer support. We returned the server and requested an immediate replacement. We were told 'No problem'. After the 7th day, still not being built. At two and a half weeks we got our server. The server came back to us missing parts, and still suffering from the same problem we were having before!"
"What ever happened to tech support? It used to be that companies would trip over themselves to make customers happy. Today it seems that unless you are spending 1 million plus dollars, they could give a crap less. When spending $12K plus on a single server, you would expect that the thing would work, huh? Are there any vendors who do provide good all around customer support these days?"
I looked into what happened with this ticket and, after having talked with this customer and gotten his ok to post about it, would like to share with you what happened, where we made mistakes and what we are doing to fix this.
As noted in the post, one of the machines that the customer recieved had some problems coming up. This was a problem with the raid subsystem that prevented boot up.
After a telephone conversation, Mr. Phillips sent the machine back to us to work on it.
We replaced a drive in this machine shipped it back, and the problem was still there. The machine shipped out working, all I can assume is that a shipper dropped the machine (hard) or something.
Once he recieved the machine and it still ahd the problem, we opted to build him a new machine. During burn in there was problem with the memory that necessitated the replacement of memory and retesting. This is park of the 2 week delay we talks of.
So while hardware failures during shipping happen, we made a clear mistake by not keeping the customer informed of the delays in burn in.
Then we shipped the machine back to him.
At this point we discovered that we forgot to add an extra nic that was part of his order.
Again, our bad, we screwed up. He took the nic from the original faulty server (he kept it while we worked up a new one for him) and put it in the machine, which worked fine.
At this point it was 30 days or so from when he received the first bad machine in his order or 4 machines.
We saw the /. post when it went up on slashdot, called the customer and talked with him regarding the screwups on our part and to make sure he that the machines were (now) working fine and that there wasn't anything new that we didn't know about. There wasn't. And he was very surprised it had gone up on slashdot :-)
So there you go, that's the whole story a mixture of human error and lack of notification on our part, burn in delays, and shipping issues combined to make a bad customer experience which we clearly regret.
All I can say is that the human error can be minimized to a great degree, shipper problems can be pretty out of our control (we do use sturdy shipping containers, but you wouldn't believe what we've seen happen in shipping) and communication is now in an improved state and be clear all of our techs know that keeping the customer continually informed is the right way to do things.
So there you go, if anyone has any questions, you can post them here, email me at jritter@valinux.com or call at 408-542-5722.
As a side note, a lot of people have posted that the customer doesn't deserve support and got what was coming to him since he removed our software load. That's totally incorrect, VA still has a responsibility to ship good product and support said product. When someone replaces our load, we still try to support it, but it does make it harder and increases troubleshooting time. Note that hardware support doesn't go away becuase of mandrake being installed.
I want to assure people that while this was bad, it is the exception, while it seems weird to say this here and now, VA has a very good record of dealing with support issues. If you have any questions about how we do things here, please post them and I'll answer them here.
Jeff Ritter
Support Manager, VA Linux Systems
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems
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Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
This is how I would rate experiences with them:
- Linux Hardware Solutions: totally didn't have their act together, one guy was trying to sell them, build them and do tech support it seems. Good thing they got bought.
- Dell: Dell still has a long way to go learning to do Linux. Other than the Dell desktop background, they do very little to tweek the distro from what I have seen. They are trying to sell to a NT crowd, but mess up. For example, when you order a Dell with a tape drive, they don't have enough sense to include BRU or something, or even make sure there is a device in
/dev for it. New users are stumped by this. Granted, of them all, Dells are built the best. Rare to get a DOA Dell, and when you do, you can ship it back and get a new one fairly easily. Average time for a new system: one month.
- VALinux: Is the biggest of the linux only group. Their manuals are nicer and more refined, as are their servers. You will get DOA equipment from them like 1 times out of 10. They are pretty good at replacing, but this can vary. As can how long it takes to build them. I have gotten a VA in 1 day (they keep some in stock pre-fab) and I have had one take 2 months. Average is 1-2 weeks. Their SECOND tier tech support is pretty good. They also provide nifty things like the vacuum program to remote admin via serial. Better to stick with their distro unless you know what you are doing, and the poster CLEARLY has no clue if they are installing mandrake on a server. I always install Debian on them with no problem, except for RAID cards, which is getting better.
- Penguin is smaller than VA, and their systems/tech support are about the same. The advantage to them is they are 3 floors up from me, and the DOA system I got from them, I just hauled it upstairs, but did take 2 weeks to get a new one (granted, they just changed their tracking system and things were a mess.) Build times are from 1 week to 3 weeks. They have less "gurus" than VA but do good testing. They are cheaper than VA.
- Cheapy guy that makes Yahoo's boxes. These are 1/2 the price of the others. Dont expect ANY tech support if you go this route, you are on your own. Almost 1/2 of these had problems. Yeah they are cheap, but is it worth your time?...
Things to consider with ANY hardware manufacturer: You are dealing with cheap (yes, $12,000 is CHEAP for a server) systems here. Margins are razor thin. No one has the bucks to blow on stupendous tech support, NO ONE. If you want tech support that will WOW! you and systems that are almost NEVER DOA, you get a Sun, period. Quite frankly, if that is the level of support you want, you PAY for it, and pay dearly. Instead of $12,000 for a cheapie Intel box, expect to pay $50,000 for a Sun. Is it worth 5X? Well, the quality is there, and yes they are paying you a premium for a premium product. Just like the profit margin on a top of line BMW is much higher than an escort. If you buy an Intel box as a server, you are getting an Escort, expect the same level of quality.So, when it comes to buying Intel Linux boxes, I guess what I am saying is that they are OK, but don't EVER expect to be WOWed by tech support. If you are serious and have a good admin, you will be OK. Obviously yall DONT have a good admin (eg, the mandrake thing) and are paying the price. It doesn't pay to be cheap. Go get some one that knows what they are doing, you can't expect the tech guys at a manufacturer to be your admin for you and answer all your questions and hold your hand. The $500 they made on that $12,000 system gets eaten REAL quick paying some one $30 an hour to sit on the phone and guide you through the pretty mandrake install.
Ah ha ha! You posted this knowing full well that it would be moderated funny, discrediting the truth behind VA owning Malda! You are using reverse-reverse-psychology! You're probably invested in Andover and use Microsoft Windows and hate Linux to boot! The truth is out there! Aliens are posting on slashdot! New coke was a government mind contol test!
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Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Remember that today's computer companies often make tiny margins on their sales.
Remember also that computers are complicated things, regardless of the operating system being used. Users will always call up with stupid, basic questions, wasting the tech support time (and therefore budgets).
In a stint where I did a lot of help desk tech support, I'd often get stupid questions about why is the monitor still black (turn it on), why doesn't the RAM I bought fit into the computer (I later found out the guy was trying to stuff it into the floppy disk drive but that thought *never* crossed my mind when I was on the phone with him, killing an hour of phone time), your computer must be broken because I can't get Yahoo to work (Failed to Connect error - the guy didn't even have a modem, let alone an internet account anywhere). Granted, with a rack-mounted Linux server, the questions will be a lot less basic, but still equally stupid to anyone really familiar with Linux. These will *hog* tech support time and dollars.
Customer service has had to become a thing of the past, unless you're willing to call the helpful 1-900 number or fork out your Visa on a per-incident basis.
That's the way it is and will be for the forseeable future. Unless you're in women's fashions, where the markup is often well over 100% and the number of possible tech support questions related to the newly redesigned belt buckle and zipper are limited.
It's simply not built into the cost of the sale anymore. It's a good thing, too - if it were, an el-cheapo Celeron could run way over $3,000.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.