>>Any comments from people who deal directly with SGI salemen would be
appreciated.<<
Then Mark said,
> I'm familiar with them from dealing with them in an education
> environment. The sales and service reps are not great (this
> is an understatement).
I think that, even if anecdotal, war stories of this type are
important in understanding why SGI isn't doing as well as it should.
Same thing here. I still don't know if we are treated like crap
because we get 35% discount or what; but in the last year and a
half, I've given up trying to discuss any problem whatsoever with
my sales rep or the imbeciles at the hotline. I email some
engineer, and ask him who's the guy who knows this or that crap,
and go directly to the guy who made the stuff.
Without exception, the engineers have been (a) always right,
(b) courteous and eager to help (c) willing to solve things
the most convenient way for me (like giving me betas of patches
for an immediate problem). I have nothing short of Highest Praise
for them.
Most of the time, neither of the three are true for the hotline,
at least for me. For instace, once I got sold a board that was
incompatible with my current hardware; my salesperson should not
have been able to sell it to me (not even generate a quote), then
I got on the hotline, and was repeatedly asked to reseat the board
and reinstall the full OS. When I got tired the third time and
demanded some knowledge, they told me they'd be back. They weren't.
So I called the engineers and was immediately told the board was
incompatible with the R8000. Half an hour. I lost two days of work
over that crap. We're talking a 4000$ board (the old cosmo compress)
on a 30K$ workstation (a powerindigo2). This was two years ago, but
they have not grown more knowledgeable or helpful. We (some number of
groups here) bought recently a 20 processor O2000; when it got here,
the cdrom drive was broken, cables were missing for the power supply,
etc. Took more than a week to fix that! Fancy that: a week to replace
a cdrom drive, on a half-a-million purchase! Once again, maybe they
treat us like crap because we get 35% discount.
I am now going through a VAR. I ordered an O2 and got it in one day.
If I have a problem, I only ask the engineers; usually, I ask them
before buying now. I stay with SGI because of the engineers and
the technology: at 35% or better disoount from SGI, nothing in the
NT world could do better. But their sales and support sucks big time,
at least in academia. If it's the same in the real world, then
no wonder NT is eating them raw.
Best, |
