Has anyone else gotten just a little bit miffed at the frequency, speed, and pointlessness of the calls about NetApp RMAs?
I get called in less than a week. shipped on 1-31, received on 2-1, reminder(actually more of a where is it, ya dead beat?) call on 2-2!, it is scheduled to be installed today and I don't want the broken box in office; it gets shipped when I have time.
sometimes I'll get a call with a list of RMAs from the last 6 months and they expect me to respond with the whereabouts of every RMA when the fact is they have all been shipped back to NetApp.
I have to schedule work to replace parts and it takes sometimes a week or more(usually less) and I don't want to have to deal with some extra middle man company to try to justify what I am doing with the RMA. And I feel guilty if I shine them on.
}}}===============>> LLNL James E. Harm (Jim); jharm@llnl.gov (925) 422-4018 Page: 423-7705x57152
Jim Harm wrote:
sometimes I'll get a call with a list of RMAs from the last 6 months and they expect me to respond with the whereabouts of every RMA when the fact is they have all been shipped back to NetApp.
I used to get these too. The last one i got i was blatantly rude to the person who called, which is very much against my character (i hope). But man, why should i have to go through 50 RMA's with these people once a month?? They haven't called me back since. :-)
Funny thing was, they were asking me about RMA's for hardware that I *know* i would never RMA, because i don't own it. I think they just lost a lot of stuff and are trying to track it down.
Graham
I, too, have had more than one occasion (well, ok, two occasions) where I shipped the part back to Netapp, but the middle-man company continued to call and bug me about it -- even with me insisting they call Netapp and confirm the drives were back. Just because it was not in the SonicAir(?) computer they assumed I was lieing or something. I myself had called Netapp and confirmed that they were back. I think the fact that I drove over to Netapp both times and dropped off the drives confused them.
Justin Acklin
Jim Harm wrote:
Has anyone else gotten just a little bit miffed at the frequency, speed, and pointlessness of the calls about NetApp RMAs?
I get called in less than a week. shipped on 1-31, received on 2-1, reminder(actually more of a where is it, ya dead beat?) call on 2-2!, it is scheduled to be installed today and I don't want the broken box in office; it gets shipped when I have time.
sometimes I'll get a call with a list of RMAs from the last 6 months and they expect me to respond with the whereabouts of every RMA when the fact is they have all been shipped back to NetApp.
I have to schedule work to replace parts and it takes sometimes a week or more(usually less) and I don't want to have to deal with some extra middle man company to try to justify what I am doing with the RMA. And I feel guilty if I shine them on.
}}}===============>> LLNL James E. Harm (Jim); jharm@llnl.gov (925) 422-4018 Page: 423-7705x57152
Jim:
We feel the same pain. =)
NetApp RMA's with NetApp used to be great - better than expected even. Usually the first sign something was broken was the replacement part on our desk that had been sent out from autosupport. We only got hassled for extremely deliquent RMA's (more than 3 months past due), which is reasonable.
Ever since SonicAir has taken over a certian portion of the RMA workflow, the whole process has become a horrible experience. They *never* ship a part pro-actively from autosupport mail anymore, a web form must be filled out for every request. Sometimes, no matter how detailed a description is given on the web form, the wrong part is sent (it took a month and 3 separate shipments to get a differential SCSI converter for a StorageShelf2). On top of that, somebody hounds us mere days after the shipment arraives.
To our sales team's credit, the hounding phone calls have gone away, but I'd say our evaluation of NetApp RMA's has gone from 110% (better than expected) to 70% (fair). Hopefuly, a continued customer onslaught will motivate the necessary change to fix this process.
-- Jeff
-- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Krueger E-Mail: jeff@qualcomm.com NetApp File Server Lead Phone: 858-651-6709 IT Engineering and Support Fax: 858-651-6627 QUALCOMM, Incorporated Web: www.qualcomm.com
From Jim Harm on Thu, 03 Feb 2000 11:47:35 PST:
Has anyone else gotten just a little bit miffed at the frequency, speed, and pointlessness of the calls about NetApp RMAs?
I get called in less than a week. shipped on 1-31, received on 2-1, reminder(actually more of a where is it, ya dead beat?) call on 2-2!, it is scheduled to be installed today and I don't want the broken box in office; it gets shipped when I have time.
sometimes I'll get a call with a list of RMAs from the last 6 months and they expect me to respond with the whereabouts of every RMA when the fact is they have all been shipped back to NetApp.
I have to schedule work to replace parts and it takes sometimes a week or more(usually less) and I don't want to have to deal with some extra middle man company to try to justify what I am doing with the RMA. And I feel guilty if I shine them on.
}}}===============>> LLNL James E. Harm (Jim); jharm@llnl.gov (925) 422-4018 Page: 423-7705x57152
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Bruce Sterling Woodcock wrote:
Ever since SonicAir has taken over a certian portion of the RMA workflow, the whole process has become a horrible experience.
Let this be a lesson to anyone who touts outsourcing as the solution to their problems.
Bruce
Amen. I think SonicAir needs to work on their style, they are rather snappy and obnoxious when it comes to RMA calls. They also call for RMAs that are for nonreturnables, which I had to correct them rather sternly.
-Scott
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Scott T. Mikusko Scrape the clouds of rouge from his face, Systems Engineer and he's white as noise Concentric Network Corporation Internet Guerilla -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Jim,
It would seem your pain is a common complaint :/
I guess SonicAir is the US distribution co, in Europe we have Kamino. And they're not much better.
I've had Faxes requesting the return of RMA parts which arrived that morning. I occasionally get requests that date back over 12 months, which is prior to me being in this department, including attempting to track down a single 9G SCSI disk from '98. And we regularly get asked for parts I packed up for shipping personally. I *know* they went.
Is it something netapp are doing or are there just a few issues in the courier business?
J
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- # John Denholm johnd@theplanet.net # # Webcache & Filer Administrator, Planet Online +44 113 207 6357 # ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Error 404: There is no spoon
For the record, our NetApp sales person says he'll take care of it. Since others have echoed the complaint; go, seek out your sales rep. and be happy again.
At 9:17 AM +0000 2/4/00, John Denholm wrote:
Jim,
It would seem your pain is a common complaint :/
I guess SonicAir is the US distribution co, in Europe we have Kamino. And they're not much better.
I've had Faxes requesting the return of RMA parts which arrived that morning. I occasionally get requests that date back over 12 months, which is prior to me being in this department, including attempting to track down a single 9G SCSI disk from '98. And we regularly get asked for parts I packed up for shipping personally. I *know* they went.
Is it something netapp are doing or are there just a few issues in the courier business?
J
# John Denholm johnd@theplanet.net #
# Webcache & Filer Administrator, Planet Online +44 113 207 6357 #
Error 404: There is no spoon
}}}===============>> LLNL James E. Harm (Jim); jharm@llnl.gov (925) 422-4018 Page: 423-7705x57152
At one point I was getting many of these phone calls. So much so, that I was keeping explicit logs of all the RMA's. To make matters worse, there are several groups within my company that use NetApp so I would often get phone calls for RMAs that are issued to another group -- point being tracking my own stuff was not enough. At this point I started to use the NOW web page to figure this stuff out. I have not received a phone call in quite some time now though I am still getting the customer surveys. -gdg
Jim Harm wrote:
Has anyone else gotten just a little bit miffed at the frequency, speed, and pointlessness of the calls about NetApp RMAs?
I get called in less than a week. shipped on 1-31, received on 2-1, reminder(actually more of a where is it, ya dead beat?) call on 2-2!, it is scheduled to be installed today and I don't want the broken box in office; it gets shipped when I have time.
sometimes I'll get a call with a list of RMAs from the last 6 months and they expect me to respond with the whereabouts of every RMA when the fact is they have all been shipped back to NetApp.
I have to schedule work to replace parts and it takes sometimes a week or more(usually less) and I don't want to have to deal with some extra middle man company to try to justify what I am doing with the RMA. And I feel guilty if I shine them on.
}}}===============>> LLNL James E. Harm (Jim); jharm@llnl.gov (925) 422-4018 Page: 423-7705x57152
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- G D Geen mailto:geen@ti.com Texas Instruments Phone : (972)480.7896 System Administrator FAX : (972)480.7676 --------------------------------------------------------------- Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. -J. Lennon
I know I'm a bit late in the thread but I was thinking Saturday night ( as I was battling a failing LRC and PCI FC interface on a pair of our clustered F740s ) what a s'load of RMA we've had for NetApp.
I've got a 2 years history with NetApps starting with F230's and progressing through the F520's and F740's. I have a large folder for RMA's and our 6 NetApps have had more RMA's than our Unix and NT servers combined.....( that's 65 servers )
Here's a glimpse:
6 Quad Fast Ethernet card replacements 1 LCD replacement ( filer won't boot without it ) 3 Motherboards ( F500's ) 4 9GB SCSI disks ( understandable ) 6 9GB FC disks ( within the first 2 months? ) 1 complete F520 chassis/MB/RAM/Cache 4 Fibre Channel adapters ( 2 were for replacing onboards ) 3 LRC 2 Fan assemblies 1 Cache 2 Shelf environmental units. 1 Tandem board 4 Filer power supplies ( F520's and F740's )
Questions:
1) Are we cursed? Yes, we have clean power, a climate controlled environment, no malicious admins.
2) Has anyone else seen this amount of RMA's? Yes, Sonic was a pain in the but but our Sales guy cleaned everything up.
3) Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the F500 series has pretty much been end of lifed? Have you tried buying replacement disks or parts for one? Renewed your Service contract recently? I was more than mildly surprised to find I can't but new disks for my F520's and can't buy support past October of this year. They're 2 years old...
Granted some of this can be explained by NetApp throwing HW at issues. As an example, our most recent LRC problem was solved with NetApp sending us 2 FC PCI cards, cables, LRC, cable, and disks. Of course the tech goofed on overnighting it so they had to make 'special' provisions to get it here overnight...
Tim
G D Geen wrote:
At one point I was getting many of these phone calls. So much so, that I was keeping explicit logs of all the RMA's. To make matters worse, there are several groups within my company that use NetApp so I would often get phone calls for RMAs that are issued to another group -- point being tracking my own stuff was not enough. At this point I started to use the NOW web page to figure this stuff out. I have not received a phone call in quite some time now though I am still getting the customer surveys. -gdg
Jim Harm wrote:
Has anyone else gotten just a little bit miffed at the frequency, speed, and pointlessness of the calls about NetApp RMAs?
I get called in less than a week. shipped on 1-31, received on 2-1, reminder(actually more of a where is it, ya dead beat?) call on 2-2!, it is scheduled to be installed today and I don't want the broken box in office; it gets shipped when I have time.
sometimes I'll get a call with a list of RMAs from the last 6 months and they expect me to respond with the whereabouts of every RMA when the fact is they have all been shipped back to NetApp.
I have to schedule work to replace parts and it takes sometimes a week or more(usually less) and I don't want to have to deal with some extra middle man company to try to justify what I am doing with the RMA. And I feel guilty if I shine them on.
}}}===============>> LLNL James E. Harm (Jim); jharm@llnl.gov (925) 422-4018 Page: 423-7705x57152
--
G D Geen mailto:geen@ti.com Texas Instruments Phone : (972)480.7896 System Administrator FAX : (972)480.7676
Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. -J. Lennon
-- Tim McDonough Agouron Pharmaceuticals
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Bruce Sterling Woodcock -
G D Geen -
Graham C. Knight -
Jeff Krueger -
Jim Harm -
John Denholm -
Justin Acklin -
Scott Mikusko -
Tim McDonough