Response to Sun documentation/support gripe

[Steve Harris]

Fellow sun-spotters:

Talk about squeeky wheels!  Suddenly I'm swimming in grease!

Last week I posted (in v7n104) a major gripe about Sun doucmentation and
the responsiveness of the Sun answerline.  Within just a few days I
received phone calls from the Sun STB distribution manager and the
Northeast field support manager, and email from at least one Sun FSE, and
others (see below).

In brief:

    o	All my missing STBs were Fed-Ex'ed to me.  (Wouldn't you
	know it: the November STB arrived one day after the December
	STB, one day after I posted my gripe.)

    o	No, it doesn't seem Sun has any interest in changing from
	8.5 X 11 format to 6 X 9.  Nor of providing binders.
	They seem to be locked into the large format, and unable
	(lacking the will) to change the inertia.  I suppose they
	have a warehouse with several million dollars worth of
	documentation sets which they cannot scrap.

    o	Yes, they recoginze their answerline response has been
	less than wonderful, and are hiring a bunch of new people
	to support their customers.  However, there will be a
	major learning curve, and the quality of the response
	will probably decline while the new people are learning
	the ropes.

I received the following email (exerpted):
__________

Steve,

I'm a Sun TSE at the US Answer Center who supports awk (among other products).
... the sed and awk
detailed descriptions can be located behind the green tab labeled
"Section II: Searching Through Files" in the 3.X docubox.

Sincerely,

Mary Ann May-Pumphrey

[She's right!  I just didn't know where to look. -- vsh]
__________

     We did receive our November issue (no October), but you have to
be patient.  It did not arrive until after the December issue (:-)
Maybe they use a different calendar in California.

Daniel Trinkle			trinkle at cs.purdue.edu
__________

Steve, if you have trouble getting Sun tech bulletins, send mail to
sun!stb-editor. It works reliably and it works fast. I share your attitude
about Sun service in general, but the stb people have their act remarkably
together.

If you were to try to get stb's mailed to you via the 800 number, it's
likely not to happen. But that's the answer center's problem, not the stb
folk. I know most of the people involved, and know that the stb folk often
don't hear from the answer center folk when answer center hears that a
customer is missing an stb. (did that parse?)

Contact the stb folk directly. You'll get your bulletins. Really!

[I was given the address "fir at sun", which is the documentation
distribution organization (fir == field info release???).  Probably
either will produce results. -- vsh]

..Celeste Stokely
Coherent Thought Inc.
UUCP:	...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!celeste   Domain: celeste at coherent.com
__________

uunet!auspex!guy (Guy Harris):
... when I was at Sun, I complained at least once to one of the
documentation managers that 6x9 was a lot nicer than 8.5x11 - I forget
what reason she gave why she didn't really want to do it, perhaps cost
__________

uunet!research.att.com!mp at allegra@research:

I occasionally don't get an STB issue, but I send them mail about it and
have always received replacements.
__________

...We won't [search for another hardware vendor].  Why?  Because _I_ can't
name a vendor which provides equivalent cost/performance _and_ better
customer support.  Can you?

[discussion of how REALLY awful DEC and IBM documentation/support are]

... Sun's device driver documentation is the best I've _ever_ seen.

The problem (obviously) is that Sun can't expand services as fast as its
customer base is growing.  DEC went thru similar growing pains in the
mid-70's.  All good companies do.  So pipe down and give them a chance...
there's certainly some evidence that they are aware of the problem and are
trying to correct it.

{harvard,mit-eddie,think}!eplunix!das		David Allan Steffens
__________

Just FYI... we have been getting our STBs -- all of them -- but timing is
real screwy.  I got Dec '88 about Jan 4 '89 -- not SO bad in itself -- but
then got Nov '88 the next day.  

This lateness is typical in my experience.  But we do currently have  a
"full" set.

And I'm with you on the customer/end-user support.  I think Sun is fairly
confident that the "we'll go elsewhere" threat will not be carried out. 

      Mike Jipping
      jipping at cs.hope.edu
-- 
Steve Harris -- Eaton Corp. -- Beverly, MA -- uunet!etnibsd!vsh