ESL contacts

[Jack Suess, UMBC ACS Staff, 410-455-2582]

A few people have written that they routinely call into both vms and
ultrix support with no questions asked. I have never had a problem
with contacting csc, in fact we any systems member can call csc
give them the access code and say they are calling on my behalf. There
are never any problems with csc accepting calls, dec should be commended
on this, the CSC has not let this issue stand in the way of providing
support.

However, in terms of the official policy it does seem that dec has stated
the policy that for each OS the same person counts as a seperate contact.
I'm not out to flame Dec on this, just verify the policy. Since there is
confusion on this Dec should make sure it's sales force understand this
point and that contacts are priced consistently around the country.

Personally, I believe dec should give free contacts and use a 900 number
for support. Let those that use the support line pay for it.

jack suess

[BT...@rti.bitnet]

Mark Wood asks:
o Can an individual contact talk to any team? Or does the customer have to
o designate separate VMS and Ultrix contact names...

Yes, an ESL contact is supposed to talk to any team. For example, I'm listed
as one of the three contacts for my site. Although my experience is solely
VMS and MS-DOS ( I've never even logged onto a U**X box, at least not
deliberately ;-) ). I forward inquiries on behalf of VMS, ULTRIX, and PATHworks
users to the appropriate DEC support services. So far, I haven't run
into trouble due to my UNIX illiteracy.

Standard procedure is to have the CSC person call the end user/sys manager
who's having the problem, and let them resolve it. At that point, I'm out of
the loop unless my people need me to get involved for whatever reason.

For DSNlink, I act as e-mail middleman as needed. Since I've been doing this
for a couple of years, I've developed enough familiarity with my users and
doing business with DEC so that I can initiate a help request in the most
appropriate way, be it CSC, DSN, DSNlink, sales rep, TEIHOTLINE, whatever.

Come to think of it, that may well be the most useful contribution I make as
a support contact. Remember when you first tried to do business with DEC? I'll
bet, like me, (and 99.99% of our users) you thought it was a most inscrutible
multi-headed hydra-beast...

o If one person handles both VMS and Ultrix problems, is he paid for twice?
o He still only handles 40 hours' worth of problems per week. (In a slow week,
o anyway. :-)

Not here, at least!!

Brian Sweeny (919) 541-6759
Ragland Computer Center internet: b...@rcc.rti.org
Research Triangle Institute bitnet: bts@rti
RTP, N.C. 27709