rtaylor@tron.UUCP (Randy Taylor) (02/28/91)
Hello world ! :-) The other day, I posted a message about OmniBack 8mm drives and asked some questions about how to run remote restores. I would like to thank those who responded - the replies helped a great deal. However, during the course of my diatribe about 8mm tape drive woes, I mentioned that we had problems with drives supplied by Workstation Solutions. Much to my surprise, I received e-mail from Jim Ward, President of said company. Jim and I have been corresponding over the last day or two about the nature of our problems and what WS could do to solve them. I was so impressed by Jims' willingness to listen to our concerns - and it should be noted here that some of the problems were caused by our own bureaucracy here at WEC - that I wanted to post a message detailing some important points that arose from our discussions. The following *is not* a product endorsement and should not be considered as such. I write this to "clear the air" and am under no duress whatsover to post this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) Our problems with the WS 8mm equipment were, in the main, hardware related. Said hardware is *not* produced by Workstation Solutions (WS). The hardware is produced by a company other than WS. I was not aware of that and thought I should post it in case others were not aware. Jim pointed out that the company that produces his hardware also produces it for the HP/Apollo OmniBack system. 2) WS service *did* fix our problems. The majority of turnaround time was garnered in our own shipping/receiving department. We are a large company with a truly massive bureaucracy. WS often works out alternative shipping arrangements to reduce the turnaround time problems I noted. They will even ship to your house if that is what is takes to speed things up ! Friends, that fits my definition of co-operation. :-) 3) WS can arrange a "'hot spare' at your site for a very low cost". That's a direct quote from one my mail message from Jim/WS. This may be a viable alternative for some of you out there. 4) 8mm drive product quality has improved over time. I agree. We've had no problems with OmniBack drives and WS 8mm drives have been working fine since the last fix. 5) Jim monitors the comp.sys.apollo forum (and possibly others). He can be reached via e-mail. If you post a gripe/flame here about WS, you'll probably hear from him so I won't post his e-mail address here. I did suggest that he might put some type of workstation with an Internet connection in his service department though, as an alternative to telephones - you could paste in an actual error message and send it directly to WS service that way. *Good* idea ? - who knows ? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It was refreshing to see a CEO willing to get involved and work out a solution with us. While more cynical folks would maintain that Jim is simply looking out for his own backside, I would maintain that Jim cares about not only the bottom line, but about making sure that his customers are taken care of and satisfied. What I've noted here is only a condensed version of our correspondence of the last two days. We covered *all* of our problems and concerns in detail - we learned what we could do better and I think WS got some ideas too. I have become so used to the type of service I've seen from HP/Apollo (and other companies), i.e. apparently ignored APR's, "no patch tape - wait until the next release", etc. that I assume *all* companies are that poor at providing service. I just wanted to make it clear that Workstation Solutions *does not* feel that way about its customers. I hope I've cleared the air a bit and I hope I've not offended anyone on the net by posting this. Randy Taylor Westinghouse Electric Corp. Baltimore, Maryland As ---jt--- would say it, "What, me represent Westinghouse ? You've got to be kidding !" -- rtaylor@sky00.bwi.wec.com from an Internet site (preferred) rtaylor@tron.bwi.wec.com from an Internet site (alternate) "...you know I have the greatest enthusiam for the mission." HAL 9000