🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3tpf64$gmh@news1.mcs.net>,
Phil N. Schuman <pschuman@interserv.com> wrote:
>Bob - we'll never win - Karl is ALWAYS right - 
>
>I sent an Email trying to tell him that his news server was not functioning - 
>and got back a "go away and don't bother me" message.

You got back a redirect to the proper procedure, which you have been
informed of before both by automatic responder and otherwise.  You decided 
to ignore that procedure, and then decided to demand a fix personally from
me.

That would be fine if I was the only MCSNet employee.  But I'm not.  Not
even close.

FACT IS, I am not the person who carries the pager, nor the one who has the
responsibility to come in on a weekend to push a reset button.  But there
*are* people who DO have that job, and if you follow procedure, you'll get a
FAST AND EFFICIENT response.

>then, on the other hand, I may ask a question about ISDN - 
>and I get an immediate response.

Right.  That's part of my job.  If you work with the procedures you have
been made aware of you will get an appropriate response.

If you refuse you will not get the results you are looking for.

>and hey - IF the email addresses were SO important - 
>why are they not listed in the MCS home page directly ? 
>and not under the FAQ - where the billing and support "dept heads" are listed?
>it's a love/hate relationship - typical tech head - having been one myself.
>I like the expert tech knowledge - but the lack of a marketing sense counter balances it - 
>it just depends how much you are willing to put up with before pulling the plug

If you are that unhappy, why are you still here?

Fact is, there is a 24x7 Skypager number which you, and any other CUSTOMER
can use to report service outages on weekends and evenings after 9.  

For SERVICE OUTAGES, email or posting is NOT APPROPRIATE.  These are
emergencies, and the ONLY appropriate way to deal with them is a phone 
call -- to get an answer, or someone on it, *RIGHT NOW*.

If you email about a news server being offline, you might not get a response
for 8 hours or more -- someone might be sleeping, as an example.  The
beeper, on the other hand, will wake that same someone up, who is then
obligated to fix the problem.  There are FOUR employees, myself included,
who live within a 5 minute walk from the server which you had a problem
with.  TWO of them carry Skypagers, and Kim and I carry alphanumeric pagers
which these people can use to reach us in the event they cannot handle the
problem at hand.

There is an EXTENSIVE internal procedure for handling off-hours service
outages.  We require customers to follow procedure in order to be assured of
good service in these events.  If you will not do so, then our response will
not be adequate by *my* standards, and probably not by yours either.

If you email *me* about that same outage, with a "fix it now" tone, you're
not going to get a rapid response.  Why?  Because *it is not my responsibility
to fix it*, and you are ignoring explicit instruction which you have received 
about *how* to receive quality service from our firm.

If you flame here about an 8 hour news outage, but didn't REPORT IT for 8
hours via appropriate channels, you'll not get any response or change in
procedure from us.  Obviously it wasn't important enough *to you* to follow
our procedures to get a rapid response - so therefore, you just defined what
you believe is an acceptable response to the problem.

If, on the other hand, you DO page or call in these situations and fail to
get an appropriate response, Kim and I want to hear about it.  That means
that one of our employees, who has the responsibility of monitoring this
pager, isn't doing their job.  We need the date/time/problem on this, so we
can track it.

We consider that a serious problem which we will correct immediately.  

Bellyaching about an 8 hour news failure when I am sleeping, and so were
the people responsible for monitoring the pager -- when nobody has reported
the outage -- is not productive, will not change our procedure, and will not
cause us to get upset with anyone (or any piece of hardware) about an 
inadequate job being done.

BTW, the monitoring system that watches the server can't catch these failures
-- the system remains pingable during the hang, so the SNMP monitor fails to
see a problem.

--
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