ptw@vaxine.UUCP (P. T. Withington) (12/14/83)
Hi folks,
We're trying to convince our management to buy us a few Sun's but they don't
believe they work (Sun who?). If you have a few minutes and would like to send
your (hopefully glowing) review of your Sun system, please drop me a line.
Respectfully yours,
{allegra,ihnp4,decvax}!{linus,ima,wjh12}!vaxine!ptwlibes@nbs-amrf.UUCP (01/06/84)
>From: ptw@vaxine.UUCP >We're trying to convince our management to buy us a few Sun's but they >don't believe they work (Sun who?). If you have a few minutes and would >like to send your (hopefully glowing) review of your Sun system, please >drop me a line. Here is our Sun testimonial: We ordered 9 Suns with color monitors, several large disk drives, extra memory, etc. In other words, the whole works. The cost was $364,468. The order went out 9/30/83. Sun guarantees a 90-day delivery, thus we expected them by 12/29/83. Just before then, Sun delivered to us 1 machine and told us that they would only be able to deliver 6 Suns by Jan. 1. Additionally, they told us that the following items would not be initially included: UNIX 4.2 68010 and window management hardware color monitor(s) It is now 1/5/84 and we have received 1 Sun total. The (unofficial) opinion of our procurement people is that Sun is acting very stupidly in their dealing with us. Sun waited until the last minute to tell us there would be problems in delivery. They should have notified us as soon as possible so we could have come to a mutual understanding. As it is now, we do not have to start the 30-day acceptance period until "complete shipment" occurs. (If it takes Sun 6 months to deliver 4.2 running on a 68010 we could use the Suns for 7 months before paying for them!) The worst case scenerio, which I'm told is rarely followed up on, is that if we decide to forget Sun and go with someone else (because Sun has shown that they cannot adhere to the contract and supply what they promised in the specified time period), they are liable to pay the difference between their price and the next highest bidder, since these were purchased after a public request for bids. Latest word is that the remaining 5 Suns (out of the 6 they said they could deliver) were "partially shipped" last Friday (after the promised Thursday delivery date) by "deferred air". This means they might wait in the airport awhile until space is available in the next flight. Now you might think that this is all pretty damn picky. On the other hand, consider my situation - I initiated the order in January of '83! Then OUR nitpicking procurement department along with the Dept of Commerce played football with the order for a couple months and finally kicked it out the door in September! Its been over a year since I've ordered these things and I'm more than a little pissed off at all parties concerned.