> >Huh? I have the regular $275/year SmartNet on all my Ciscos, and have
> >gotten help from Cisco Support at 3am on multiple occasions.
>
> This wasn't in reference to Cisco, rather your last line about Livingston
> units. I was taking a poke at Livingston's "OnCrackVision" (oops,
> "ProVision") very, very expensive annual support offering. Cisco's
> $275/year is reasonable, Livingston's flat-rate plan is not. It's insane
> (or drug induced).
Ah...that. I almost made a crack about that in my message...but thought
I'd gone far enough pushing Crisco on a Livingston list.
Cisco has the advantage of being rather large. They don't have to pay
ridiculous money to keep clueful techs at the phones at odd hours of the
night...because AFAICT, the sun never sets on Cisco. Last time I needed
help, I was patched through (on Cisco's dime) to a tech in Australia, for
whom it was somewhere around mid day...it was 3am where I was, and we must
have spent an hour or more on the phone...and it turned out to be a
problem with a new Cyclades router, and not cisco's fault at all.
> Like Livingston's much-touted internal PC ISDN TA's, ProVision needs to just
> die a quiet death and be chalked up to one of those totally stupid corporate
> decisions that make no sense.
>
> For more info, see http://www.livingston.com/Tech/Support/ProVision/
Actually, it needs to be brought back to life as SmartVision...and have
similar pricing and benefits to SmartNet. I think most of the ISP's here
would be happy to pay a few hundred/year for such a support contract on
PM3's.
SmartNet treats the customer so well that I actually recnetly bought a
used 2501. It ended up being very nearly DOA...it ran long enough to just
start the bootup process and then went poof and smelled as if something
got cooked. I called Cisco, explained the situation, and was told if I
bought SmartNet (something I was going to be required to do anyway due to
having other ciscos on smartnet) they'd replace it within 24h. So I got a
new Cisco for the price of a used one :)
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