Re: Informix Support? (long winded venting)

Here, here. Oh, if I only had six hours and a few beers I could share my stories..................... My troubles begin with the annual maintenance renewals. Our maintenance ends December 31 of each year but still are not complete for 1998. Five months late!! I think they are going for a record. Last year the maintenance didn't get paid until April. I was able to finally get accurate billing for our development licenses just 2 weeks ago so our support is not in jeopardy, but I still have two RT licenses outstanding. We have also experienced a problem with calling for an upgrade of an existing product. Informix in there finite wisdom will at that point cease support on the license you have called in to upgrade and automatically update your records to indicate the new license number. This does sound like a handy way of processing your request for the upgrade unless your system crashes BEFORE you receive the new license number to call in with. This has happened more then once in this shop. Informix also takes the standpoint when you call that if you don't have the most current license number you don't get to play. This issue is truly a sore subject with me. We have several upgrades that were ordered (before I was hired) but never applied due to program dependencies and the lack of programmers to test the applications on a newer version of Informix. Since we are the ones paying good money for this support we should not have to go through an interrogation process to obtain the support that we have already paid for. You then get sent over to customer (dis)service to resolve the problem. This often feels like being in the third grade and being sent to the principals office. It leaves me feeling like a monkey humping a football. I strongly believe that Informix has to begin using a new philosophy with there maintenance and support. The number of man hours that get wasted each year supporting this pathetic, inefficient accounting system is a strain on our relations with Informix. There is much more important things I could be doing with my time. I know that someone at Informix will read this, but fear it will fall on deaf ears. Dan - jlumbley@netcom.com on 05/05/98 08:35:38 AM Please respond to jlumbley@netcom.com To: informix-list@iiug.org cc: (bcc: Dan Weeks/AGInc) Subject: Informix Support? Is anyone else having a difficult time getting Support to deliver services? Over the years, I've come to expect to have to haggle and scream at the first-level support folks, just to get them to admit/recognize that I'm a support customer and that my systems are under support. By now, I don't even get bothered enough to make an issue of it. Today I got a call from one of my flagship customers, who touts my company's and Informix's products in seminars and tradeshows around the country. They're threatening to jump ship because every time they've called for support in the last year, they've had to do a goat dance to prove that they are supported. Informix seems to have one hell of a time tracking and validating their Support contracts. As my customer said, "I've called IBM for support for ten years. Each time, I just give them my customer number and I never have any trouble getting to a technical person. With Informix, I waste as much time with the accounting bullshit as I do with the technical stuff. It's just not worth it." It seems to me that the crux of the problem is Informix's poor system of managing renewals of support contracts. Anybody else with the same issues? Joe -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Lumbley(jlumbley@netcom.com) author of: "INFORMIX DBA Survival Guide" Slaving away on "INFORMIX DEBUGGERS Survival Guide", available early 1998 from Prentice Hall/Informix Press. If you have debugging tips, tools, or ideas to share, please send me some e-mail. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------