Re: Bypass mount/system request at boot time?

John Sauter wrote:
PR wrote (excerpted):


I'm seriously debating on whether or not to invoice them, and how much
to invoice them for. You guys solved the issue and incidentally, made
me look good to the customer. (Thanks!) I don't really think I should
invoice them because of that. :)

On the other hand, if I don't reinforce the lesson, I run the risk of
it being repeated. Gads... I am not really sure of the right thing to
do in this case.

-Paul


You should definitely invoice them. I once took a call from a customer
who couldn't get his NewTek Video Toaster to work. My technician was
out, and the customer was just down the road, so I closed the store and
went to see what was the matter. It took me five minutes to see that he
had a switch set wrong, and fix the problem. I told him I'd bill his
school for $10. Rather than have me do that, he paid the $10 out of his
own pocket, on the spot.

Worst case scenario (though Bob Koehler may have worse cases :-)

Customer got a DELUA (IIRC, though it might have been a KMC-11, part
of the same project) to network their old PDP-11/70 to their new
VAX 8550... I was there, installing DECnet/E on the PDP, VMS, DECnet,
etc. on the VAX, everything was working. I went back home,

A few days later, the PDP-11 crashed. After much mucking around,
field service fixed some problem completely unrelated to the new
comm gear (a disk controller or memory issue, most likely.) Booted
the system up, and the network didn't work. Tried all kinds of stuff.
Called us. After much rending of clothes and tearing of hair, I
realized the symptoms looked suspiciously like the board had its
"diagnostics mode" dip switch set. Had them check it. Nope, it's
in normal mode. Much more tearing of hair, several sheep and small
goats sacrificed, still no good. The customer is getting very nervous,
asked me to fly out (to Phoenix from Boston) to look at it. Late late
that night, arrived on site, pulled out the expansion box, flipped the
dip switch (which was on the edge of the card, accessible without
pulling anything out) back to "normal" from "diagnostics" mode,
rebooted, everything was fine.

They definitely got billed for that one.


Once when I was responsible for a PDP-10 system, we needed a driver for
a disk controller we were going to buy. I went to talk to the guys at a
nearby service bureau that had previously bought the controller, about
getting the driver they had written. Their technician was willing to
give it to me, but I persuaded their business guy to charge us $1000 for
it (including a year's worth of bug fixes--there weren't any). I wanted
my management to understand that software costs money.

If you don't invoice them, they will decrease their estimate of your
worth.

Technical support is like prostitution. You don't want to get a
reputation for giving freebies.
John Sauter (John_Sauter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)


--
John Santos
Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc.
781-861-0670 ext 539
.

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