roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (09/10/88)
A couple of weeks ago, I posted to this group an article entitled "UB
(Ungermann-Bass, aka Utter Bullshit) flame". At this point I want to follow
up to some of the points I made and issue a partial apology to UB.
After my note to the net, if nothing else, I did get the results I
was after. UB has agreed to honor their quote, even though the salesperson
exceeded her authority in offering discounts, and even though I didn't have
the quote in writing, and UB hadn't yet officially accepted the Purchase
Order (i.e. they hadn't signed and returned the "confirmation copy" of the
order). Among other communications, I received a phone call and a letter
from Michael Gardner, Vice President for Sales and Marketing, who apologized
for what had happened. BTW, I understand that the salesperson is no longer
with the company.
Now, for the (partial) apology; I think I over-reacted a bit. I'm a
firm believer in taking complaints as high as I have to in order to get what
I want (and think I am entitled to). With a company, taking it to the top
means writing a letter to the president of the company. With municipal
services, it means writing a letter to the Mayor. When even that fails,
airing your beef in public is sometimes the only recourse, with the intent of
shaming your target into submission. I've done all three, and more than
once. I'm usually successful.
The reason I say I over-reacted is that I jumped to the last resort
before I had exhausted all the other possibilities. Not only that, but I
could have found a way to word my note to convey the same information without
being quite so defaming. I'm usually a pretty calm guy, but you couldn't
guess it from what I wrote that day. While there is nothing in what I wrote
which is factually incorrect, it's unnecessarily vitriolic and suggests
something which I don't think is really true: that UB, as a company, is some
scheming, unethical monster out to screw their customers. What I think
really happened is that one employee put the company in a rough position and
management made some poor judgement calls in trying to resolve the problem.
While I still think UB did the Wrong Thing, that one mistake was not enough
to justify the public vilification I gave them.
The only unanswered question is whether UB would have changed their
mind and agreed to honor their commitment had I not posted my note. While
the true answer will never be known, I'd say that there was at least a fair
chance that they would have, had I spent another few days chasing executives
on the phone.
--
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net
"The connector is the network"wilson@nova.laic.uucp (Robin Wilson) (09/13/88)
In a previous article U - B was first defamed and then let off the hook in terms of their treatment of customers. I hope not everyone is so forgiving. Let me share our experience (these are my opinions only): 1. Our U-B NIU-180s drop off the network on the average of 1 per week. We have ~100 NIU-180s. (That's 1% soft failure rate per week.) 2. Our (very old) NIU-150s (which are no longer even considered a product by U-B software development) drop off at a rate of 1 soft failure and 1 hard failure per week. We have about 45 NIU-150s. (A soft failure means we have to reboot it to get it back on line, a hard failure means we have to swap it for a spare and send it to our repair shop.) 3. U-B requires us to pay a huge amount for software upgrades which include "BUG FIXES" for our current U-B equipment, and "of course" brilliantly written code for their "NEW LINE OF PRODUCTS" (which we neither need or desire to purchase). So in effect all of their old customers pay for the development of their software for all of their new customers. 4. U-B has refused to work with the third party vendors who are trying to allow users to connect to a host without using an NIU on both sides of the connection. (ie. 2 NIUs are required for every connection.) We have purchased 2 products that will allow us to eliminate our VAX side NIUs, but unfortunately neither product works with NIU-150s, so they vendors have tried to get the neccessary information from U-B to make them work, BUT U-B refused to help them. (Personnally I think either one of these products could sell alot of NIUs [to other people who don't know better] but U-B doesn't look at it that way.) My fingers are too tired to go on... R.D. Wilson "The network guy. These are my opinions only!! LMSC has no knowledge that I even have opinions, much less that I can type well enough to offend someone."