On 10/11/2012 08:37 AM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 06:07:35 -0700, Phil Smith wrote:
So it sounds like they've lost the distinction between HOWTO and bug reports.
That would be a big step backward, and indeed irritating. I do understand the
*theory* behind this: if every Tom, Dick, and Jane at every IBM customer can
open PMRs, they'll be swamped with Stupid User questions, and not get any real
bugs fixed. But that doesn't justify forcing it all through one ID: if they're
going to do that, they're basically encouraging shared IDs, which is a bad idea
(and likely prohibited by their TOS, but that's another issue). Limiting it to
some reasonable number - maybe ten - IDs per installation might make sense, but
we all know that in large shops, the DB2 guys and the sysprogs may not even
know each other's names, so one is ludicrous.
Is this per user x per product?
per user x per product x per licensed system?
-- gil
At least in the past it was the case that chargeable on-line service
support costs were purely based on number of authorized users at the
installation, without regard for number of product licenses or systems.
The product licenses only entered into consideration in that one
instance of the product under maintenance license was sufficient to
allow the installation to open PMRs against the product.
If you didn't have the required on-line access to report a PMR on a
licensed product, the alternative was to telephone the Support Center.
I would think reporting problems by phone would have to be more labor
intensive and more costly for IBM, not just an irritant for the customer
having to wait around for phone queue call-backs and trying to explain
verbally something best illustrated by cut and paste or digital
documentation. It makes absolutely no sense to me that IBM would think
it a good idea to discourage PMR reporting by erecting financial
barriers to the most efficient reporting methods, as the end result is
that their knowledge of problems and problem resolution will be delayed,
causing their product quality to suffer if installations are discouraged
from reporting problems in a timely fashion. When an installation
reports a problem, the resolution of that problem doesn't just benefit
that installation, but potentially all other installations using that
product. The reporting installation is actually performing a "service"
for IBM, so the ease of reporting and the costs that IBM expects the
installation to incur for that process should reflect that fact!
In the spirit of SHARE, we would even occasionally report a problem for
which we already had found a circumvention, especially if the resolution
had taken a significant effort on our part and finding an APAR
resolution would be an obvious benefit for others (and if we didn't want
to fight the same problem in the next product release).
--
Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR [email protected]
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