Re: Inquiry on Preventative Maintenance Packages

First, be careful and read the fine print. Make sure they cover what you need to have covered.

I used warranty support on computers commercially. We used to purchase Dell or IBM with 4 hour on=site support for 5 years. By then the machines are 'old' and not worth much anyway, but before then they were the lifeline of the business. The support MAINLY said we had to diagnose the problem, and they would get parts to us ASAP, or if it was a 'big deal' and we couldn't deal with is fast, they would dispatch a tech.

The 4-hour support just meant they would show up within 4 hours of our call, and would keep parts available for warranty replacement as needed for no additional charge (no shipping charges either). After 24 hours a district director would get involved, and 48 hours they would try to do a fork-lift replacement if available.

Having a couple of hundred servers we used this quite a bit, and it was really a 'best efforts' contract on the vendors side.

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The big thing is get a vendor with deep pockets, good parts supply, good local tech's, but still you have employees that know what they are doing and do what they know.

A PM package still doesn't abdicate responsibility for maintenance, it is just another tool to reduce local maintenance personnel payroll IMHO.

No other company is as interested in keeping your company up and running as your company is.