>I bypass dell and go to suppliers that don't want to be my friend, and I pocket the difference.
Do you? My relationship with dell isn't just about getting warm fuzzy feelings when I call our rep to order stuff, it's about knowing that, if I do have a problem, it's going to get resolved immediately when I call her.
There is another company that I work with, which is small, and specific to my industry, and I have a very good relationship with one of the sales people there (they're in Canada).
Well, one day, something went wrong with their product so, instead of calling and asking to talk to a CSR, I called and asked to talk to Al. Al apologized up and down because, unfortunately, the FedEx guy had already come and there weren't any more pickups for the day.
So do you know what he did? Got in his car and drove the part that I needed down to the fedex office at the airport. I had the part in my hands a little over 12 hours later.
Another one: Our office buys all of our toner from cartridge world. The guy that we talk to down there, his name is Kent, is really nice. One day, I called Kent and told him that I needed a toner cartridge for one of our printers, but I needed MICR toner (for checks). Unfortunately, he told me, they didn't have any that I could get that day, but they could ship me one in a week. But in the meantime, he would bring me a printer of theirs as well as a cartridge for it, and he wouldn't charge me for it, just thanks for always doing business with him.
This type of thing is absolutely invaluable to my business.
We'll be a Cartridge World customer for life because of this. We're not buying toner from them, we're buying the ability to print documents. I suspect that you're not buying RAM, you're buying servers that work. Do you think anybody from micron is going to jump in their car and bring you something when you need it? Or care that something got messed up and fix it for you immediately?
>Do you? My relationship with dell isn't just about getting warm fuzzy feelings when I call our rep to order stuff, it's about knowing that, if I do have a problem, it's going to get resolved immediately when I call her.
right. you need to pay a /whole lot/ to get that relationship; the cheap level support contract, in my experience, is usually worse than just fixing it myself.
the thing of it is, at least on the more affordable support plans, Dell expects a corporate environment where unexplained reboots, so long as the server comes back up in a reasonable period of time, are acceptable. In my business I say a reboot costs me... so I've got to figure out if it was hardware or software, and then trace it down from there. Dell and RHEL seem to say "Well, it came up clean, what do you want?" Dell and rhel are both awesome when a box is down and it stays down, but those problems are trivially easy for me to solve myself, so I don't really see the point of buying support for that.
>Do you think anybody from micron is going to jump in their car and bring you something when you need it? Or care that something got messed up and fix it for you immediately?
Absolutely not. and yeah, if it was something I couldn't fix myself, this would be a big concern. like I said, I go 'full service' in areas where I'm helpless, like accounting. But the thing is, when my ram goes bad, I don't /need/ micron to drive down and fix it for me. I have spares of everything, and I am better at diagnostics than any dell tech I've met.
Also, if you buy the cheap support plan from dell, well, you are waiting until Monday for your part anyhow.
Now, yeah, maintaining that skillset is pretty expensive. if it wasn't central to my business, if hardware wasn't where the majority of our money went, you would be right, it wouldn't make any sense. But hardware is where the majority of my money goes, and I am able to provide a level of service that exceeds what I have seen from dell, so it does make sense.
Do you? My relationship with dell isn't just about getting warm fuzzy feelings when I call our rep to order stuff, it's about knowing that, if I do have a problem, it's going to get resolved immediately when I call her.
There is another company that I work with, which is small, and specific to my industry, and I have a very good relationship with one of the sales people there (they're in Canada).
Well, one day, something went wrong with their product so, instead of calling and asking to talk to a CSR, I called and asked to talk to Al. Al apologized up and down because, unfortunately, the FedEx guy had already come and there weren't any more pickups for the day.
So do you know what he did? Got in his car and drove the part that I needed down to the fedex office at the airport. I had the part in my hands a little over 12 hours later.
Another one: Our office buys all of our toner from cartridge world. The guy that we talk to down there, his name is Kent, is really nice. One day, I called Kent and told him that I needed a toner cartridge for one of our printers, but I needed MICR toner (for checks). Unfortunately, he told me, they didn't have any that I could get that day, but they could ship me one in a week. But in the meantime, he would bring me a printer of theirs as well as a cartridge for it, and he wouldn't charge me for it, just thanks for always doing business with him.
This type of thing is absolutely invaluable to my business.
We'll be a Cartridge World customer for life because of this. We're not buying toner from them, we're buying the ability to print documents. I suspect that you're not buying RAM, you're buying servers that work. Do you think anybody from micron is going to jump in their car and bring you something when you need it? Or care that something got messed up and fix it for you immediately?