Travel Technology - Is this what I can expect from IBM Customer Service as a standard?

My company has a contract with IBM that clearly states that they guarantee onsite support within 24 hours. I have had an issue with a new IBM laptop since Monday. See THIS (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=425492&referrerid=15618) thread. Well, it is now Wednesday and still no onsite support. I was to have service today but I found out this morning, after I called IBM to see what was going on, that the Atlanta area dispatch office cancelled the service call yesterday. The problem is my "local" IBM support tech based in my "home" office is in Michigan with an area code of 248. My cell phone was given as my contact number and the area code for that is 970. The customer location that I was going to be at (for my job as a Field Service Engineer) is 770. Due to the confusion of the IBM area dispatcher, the call was cancelled for today without a single call to verify the information. I did call the IBM Atlanta dispatch office and explained the 3 different area codes and to confirm that I was at the 770 location (my customer facility). Nonetheless, communication at this office must not exist as the call, as I stated, was cancelled.

I called this morning to find out this and worked with the IBM Support Center to schedule a call for tomorrow morning. I have been assigned another call in South Carolina (near the North Carolina border) so service must be performed in the morning, and I mean starting at 8:00 AM and to be completed by 10:00 AM). I was to the dispatch office in Atlanta and they found a tech available and connected me. He went to discuss some troubleshooting measures to take and I performed them to no avail. Of course, the wonderful cell phone service decided at this moment to lose signal so the call was cut off. I waited for a call from the tech but this NEVER came. I have been in customer service for nearly 16 years with an industrial robotics manufacturer and I have always called the customer back when I was cut off from them. That is another story. I waited to call back after I completed the service call I was on.

I called IBM back and was told that there were apparently some problems with the area code issue again and that service was placed on hold. We are now going into day 2 of this issue (remember the 24 hour sight guarantee and that the area code issue was already discussed? :rolleyes: ). I called the IBM support center back at around 6PM this evening and was transferred to the Atlanta office. I spoke with a customer service agent and he told me that onsite support that was to have been scheduled for tomorrow was again placed on hold. He began to speak of the area code issue and I have to admit I got frustrated. I believe the CSA could tell my frustration as my tone of my voice changed. I told him that it is nothing personal and began to explain the issue again. At this time, I asked for a supervisor, as I knew as well as the CSA, that he was not going to be able to help me.

I spoke with the supervisor for several minutes basically asking why my service request had been placed on hold twice now, how we can get this issue rectified, why was I not contacted, why I have to initiate most of the phone calls, etc. This lady told me that at this time of the day, she could not set up service for the morning, and in most likelihood for tomorrow. She said that service would probably be scheduled for Friday. She then made up several excuses for the performance of the tech that never called back and I stopped her and told her that if that tech worked for me and did this, I would fire them. I told the supervisor that I would be willing to perform the service to the computer with the assistance of IBM tech support. She said that unfortunately that would void the warranty. (I suppose I am not qualified enough being that my job responsibility is to service and support industrial automated robotics systems. Oops, yet another story for another time) The supervisor then recommended that I take the parts and computer to an authorized service center that is nearby to have them perform the work. I called the service center and of course, I was 30 minutes late as they closed their doors at 6:00 PM.

It amazes me that there are people that rave about IBM's customer service. I must be talking to the wrong people as my experiences with IBM onsite support (with this issue and several in the past) have been horrid. If it were my choice, I would void my company's IBM contract and search for another vendor. I know that my company never had problems like this from our last vendor, DELL. Of course, IBM made a sweetheart deal with us and my company has come to the ideal of awarding contracts to the lowest bidder. Gee, maybe this IS the type of service I should expect. :rolleyes:

This has been the experience with the consultants at my company as well. As you experienced, the repair guys are setup for service based on the area code or home office. That doesn't work very well for traveling consultants and it trips them up every time.

I have seen my colleagues burned by service issues enough times. Sometimes being totally ineffective for an entire week. I don't think people understand how much money this costs in lost billable hours. I've kept an old backup laptop for the last few years and can have someone from home fedex it to me in an emergency.

Are you talking about IBM getting the contract for your corporation's outsourced help desk/support calls? I think the answer is yes, and that being the case, your experience is somewhat commonplace, especially for remote users.

However, if you buy a laptop directly from IBM (or one of their very few resellers), and you get IBM's onsite support for that laptop only (as an individual buyer), it's very much better than the description of your experience.

I believe IBM has a cafeteria style plan they sell to corporations when IBM takes over help desk/support functions. It appears to work like this: Ok, Mr. new client, you want someone at a dispatch office in Atlanta dedicated to your account, but your HQ is based in MI, that'll be $40k per year more. You want 24 onsite response anywhere in the continental US for remote users, add $250K to your price. You want phone support with overnight shipping for remote users, deduct $100k. I just picked these dollar numbers, but you get the idea.

IBM Global Services (their outsourced helpdesk and support operation) sucks, especially if you are a big company with boatloads of service calls/issues. We had them at Boeing (they serviced the former McDonnel/Douglas locations and those people called Boeing's internal support because it was vastly better), GE Capital and Washington Mutual and they were terrible in each case.

I am surprised, IBMs techs have been wonderful and have always been on-site the next day when my co-workers needed them.

The few times that my laptop has broken down, IBM has overnighted me the parts that I needed to fix it.

Dan

Our contract is with IBM Global. We lease computers from IBM (they must love that). IBM owns them so I would think that they would want to fix them. The tech that came today was very good. Got the system board replaced within 1 hour and did not have a single part left over. :D My issue is with the IBM Global support desk AND the dispatch office out of Atlanta. They did not assume ownership of this issue. Now, the IBM accounts manager at my company home facility is essentially saying since I did not follow the correct procedure I am at fault here. Is this guy kidding? He is a former employee for my company to boot!

IBM support does not impress me so far. :rolleyes:

I am so sorry...and offer my deepest condolences.

Last year, my company outsourced our IT servces to IBM too (supposedly to "save $$$") and things have been a mess ever since. EVERYTHING at our company needs to go through an IBM ticket. What used to take one hour to solve now takes upwards of 7 days.

Tickets get lost on a regular basis...and I often can't get my problems solved. :mad:

I want my internal IT solution providers back!!!

For future reference, thought I'd post this link (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=10891) about above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty IBM service on a laptop.

Welcome to why I HATE HATE HATE IBM machines. I can only suspect that being part of Lenovo and their massive job cuts is only going to make things even worse. FWIW, my experiences are not just based on hate, at one point my firm was almost 100% Blue, and the bluemen were at the office at least once a week. We were running stuff from Thinkpads through Aptivas to expensive AIX boxes. NEVER again will I deal with IBM.

From the perspective of hardware and the support of it I have never had a problem with IBM. I have always received extremely effecient support as long as you follow their long involved (strictly by the book) support process. I havent always agreed with some of their decissions (micro-channel for you techies) but since most of my experience has been with the mid-range division it may be a slightly different perspective than end users. The unfortunate thing with IBM is that that if you dont know the right process to follow you can get a very poor experience and that is nobodys fault but IBM's.

Now, as far as global services is concerned (which seems to be the group involved in the original post).......I have never seen the kind of professionalism that I have been used to with other groups within IBM. I find it interesting that companies outsource their help desk to save money and expect to get good service. You typically end up with support that has no idea who you are, could care less who you are and they have no stake in the company they are employed for much less a stake in the company that has hired the company they work for. In this arena unfortunately IBM is just as good (or bad) as anyone else in the game.