Dell has recently decided it's best to treat their small business customers like they were home users, have taken away dedicated account managers and has done away with the SMB workstation support center, instead now trying to retroactively force customers to purchase "gold support" on all their existing workstations in order to get any type of decent support. I typically purchase 10 - 20 workstations per year, 2 or 3 servers, some switches and routers and all the software licenses to go with it. I'm wondering if anyone from the small - medium business area is getting better support with another vendor?

The client I am working for right now has gone Lenovo actually... you can try to see what they offer. They seem to be fairly decent.

Walt
IT Consulting for Robert Half
http://roberthalftechnology.com

What's wrong with sticking with Dell, not buying the extra support and just dealing with things as they break if the Dell prices and products are right.

In other words, what do you need the support for? If it's still under warranty, Dell will send a part. If it's not, you would need to get someone to do it yourself and purchase a part.

Maybe I should put it this way. Are they actually taking something away from you that you will miss?

We have mostly Lenovo but also some HP, Dell and Toshiba.

Of the four, I like Lenovo the most. I think a lot of thought has gone into their ThinkVantage driver update process; I like it a lot. Plus, they have USA based support for most systems.

Quote (goombawaho)

What's wrong with sticking with Dell, not buying the extra support and just dealing with things as they break if the Dell prices and products are right.

Yes, Dell's prices are low. But there is probably 10 - 15 times a year someone will need to make a call to support to fix a power supply, hard drive, video card, etc.. and wasting 30 minutes on hold, and then 45 minutes explaining to a script reader "yes, I did check the power cable" where as before there was no hold time and 10 minutes of dealing with a knowledgable english speaking tech for their small business customers. Dell's customer support of their small business customers was the little extra that made them stand out. The fact that they made these changes isn't what really bugs me, I understand margins are slim, but it is the fact that they retroactively applied them to past purchases and are now telling loyal customers to go and spend $50 per old machine to get decent support. They are using their bad home support reputation as a selling point to upsell their SMB customers on prosupport.

Lenovo has gotten two nods. I'll give them a call. Looks like their prices are about the same, and I can't see how they could offer less support than Dell.

In the states, Lenovo support is handled by IBM. I take service calls for them all the time. Replacing an LCD tomorrow, for 2 pixels that are stuck on.

HP's Channel Services Network (CSN) gives businesses the option of having one or more techs in an organization certified for warranty repairs. When something breaks, the tech fills out a quick form online at CSN to request a replacement part - no phone calls. If it's in stock, then usually you'll get it the next day. That's for parts under warranty. If the labor cost for the repair is also still under warranty (assuming it was purchased with the workstation), then the process is the same. However, the difference is your organization will also get reimbursed X amount of dollars. The amount is based on the difficulty of the repair.

I don't know how the specifics work for small businesses or what the initial investment would be to get a tech certified, but it may be worth looking into.

-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

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You have USERS doing the troubleshooting when something breaks?? There's your problem. You need an IT Person to do all that. That's what they exist for - so regular employees can keep doing what they do best.

Goombawaho,
I didn't see anyone mention that USERS were doing the troubleshooting. The OP said "someone" but that could mean someone in IT.

I'm reading into "someone will need to make a call to support to fix a power supply...." perhaps incorrectly. Meh - was tired yesterday.