Dennis McCabe wrote:
>
> I recently had a disturbing incident with my HP support for my HP3k
> series 987 that I thought the rest of you might want to here about.
> During our evening shift, when only 1 operator is on site, my tape drive
> failed during backup.  This happened around 6:30 PM.  The support for my
> tape unit is from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.  We placed a service call on the
> unit knowing that they would not be able to fix it that evening, but that
> by placing the call early we would be at the top of the call queue.  The
> tape falure also caused my system to hang.  We couldn't abort the backup
> job or even do a shutdown.  The Hardware CE had suggested that we perform
> a shutdown to free up the system.  When the shutdown failed the CE than
> sent the call to PICs for software support. Just to clarify I have 2 x 24
> PICs software support but the tape drive is only 8-5.  When the call got
> to the software engineer they would not help us free up the hung system
> until we sent them a purchase order for time and materials.  This
> happened even though I have 7 x 24 PICs support! In the past I have been
> told not too worry about incidents such as this because in the worst case
> HP will always help a good customer first and worry about how they will
> get paid later. This now has changed.  I have even been told that it is
> an offical policy to line up payment and hold the customer hostage before
> any work will be done to help a customer in need.  They didn't use this
> language of course but the general idea was there.  Because my operator
> had no access to purchase orders after hours there calls for help went
> unanswered by HP.  Remember I do have 7 x 24 support for software calls
> and this was a software issue.  At lease freeing up the system I consider
> a software issue. The tape drive is a hardware problem, but I could wait
> for that to get fixed.  I couldn't wait to get my system back online!
> Thanks HP you really screwed up this time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> BTW I for those of you interested my operator finally called me and got
> me at home and even though a shutdown didn't work we could still to a
> restart of this system to get it unhung.
> I hope someone from HP will read this and respond.  So far nobody at HP
> can tell me why our calls for help when unanswered!

Dennis (and everyone else reading the list),

I for one cannot answer or explain the events as described. My
suggestion is for you to contact an Issue Manager at the Response
Center and discuss the situation with them.  At the time of the
incident, you could have talked with another manager (forgot the title)
at the Response Center as well to try to have resolved the matter.

I hope you get this problem addressed.

Mike Tilford, ASE
Hewlett-Packard Co
Baltimore, MD

"My opinions are my own, not necessarily those of my employer"