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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AJ Berger who wrote (45277)	1/26/1999 12:19:00 PM
From: anatoly goldin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

"my VAR spends $2,000 in consulting time to diagnose a intermittant bad tape drive on a Server, Compaq only reimburses him $130 labor to do a simple tape drive swap and leaves out the All tape drives have problems. You have a bad VAR, it is 10min job.

To: AJ Berger who wrote (45277)	1/26/1999 12:20:00 PM
From: Windseye	Respond to of 97611

AJ, If your experience is typical then, indeed, the efforts to slick up do have a cost hidden to many of us. Have you any kind of sense about how CPQ's quality and service is across the board? Do you participate in any user groups or the like? Doug

To: AJ Berger who wrote (45277)	1/26/1999 12:31:00 PM
From: Night Writer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

AJ IMHO From the little I know, I would look for a new VAR. NW

To: AJ Berger who wrote (45277)	1/26/1999 3:33:00 PM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 97611

AJB - You have obviously had a bad time, but you are making some sweeping statements based on personal experience, which is after all just one data point. CPQ included several measures of customer satisfaction in the bonus formula starting in 1998. I don't know the details but I understand that something like 30% of the bonus of people who 'touch the customer' is tied to the customer sat results. On a quarterly basis, CPQ has 3 independent surveys done, covering the top 5 vendors in the areas where CPQ does business. The grades went down in 2Q, held steady in 3Q and went up in 4Q. So they are concerned and working at customer sat. my VAR spends $2,000 in consulting overtime to diagnose a intermittant bad tape drive on a Server, Compaq only reimburses him $130 labor to do a simple tape drive swap and leaves out the diagnoses time. being in the service business for someone elses' hardware is an ugly, thankless business and has always been so. I was in that game in the early 80's and got out when it became obvious that it was a squeeze play between manufacturers and customers. I was doing mostly HP work. It sucked then, it sucks now. I don't think that's any particular reflection on the 'new compaq' - it's the nature of the business. Insiders will tell you that much of the restructuring at Compaq is ruining Company moral, Some insiders will tell you that - mostly the ones that are on the layoff list. Others will tell you that morale has never been better. You seem pretty down on CPQ, maybe you should get out and into a company you like better.

To: AJ Berger who wrote (45277)	1/26/1999 4:00:00 PM
From: Mark Woolfson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

AJ, I hope it wasn't YOUR purchase price that was affected 10%. That would be a new one for me. However, the services side of CPQ's business is not the VAR-side. That has always been there. I am talking about the tens of thousands of Digital service personnel acquired from DEC. Assuming the standard rate of $125/hr for the VAR's labor, we are talking 16 hours to diagnose a tape drive problem. Something seems more fishy there than just CPQ's hardware even if it took more than 4 hours. On your 2 EN's needing replacement M/B's - how long did the turnaround take to replace the boards? To me it isn't the problem, but the response to the solution. 10% failure rate isn't great but wouldn't change most corporate decisions if we are talking about hundreds of systems over a year or so period. Regards, Mark