I Called Lotus Support Often Over The Years…

Maybe a bit too much: I used to l-o-v-e Lotus Support! I got great service, fast response times, and generally had an excellent experience with them. I still like them… but the magic is gone.

Nowadays, service is a “hit or miss”. Response times have gone out the window. My “call back” preferences are ignored 50% of the time. And to top it off, I’ve had really bad experiences recently with some support reps.

If you wonder if I have anything to “back my claims”, here’s a graph that indicates how often I called Lotus Support over the past 10 years.

If you wonder what happened in 2010, it’s very simple: that’s the year we deployed Lotus Notes R8.5.1. It’s as simple as that: we had a few problems with it.

So, Where’s Pay-Per-Incident?

As we prepare to move away from Lotus to Google Apps (see my blog post here) we will not renew our support agreement when it comes up for renewal (soon). We won’t get rid of Lotus Notes & Domino right away… we’ve got too many apps on that platform

So my manager Patrick asked me to check with Lotus Support the cost for “Pay Per Incident” calls with Lotus Support.

I called up Lotus Support and after 1 transfer, 1 disconnect later and 1 call back, I was able to speak with a customer service rep named “Magan” who told me that Lotus Support does not offer “Pay Per Incident” anymore.

That’s odd! BlackBerry still does (don’t take my word for it: check this page on their site for details) and VMware also offers that for some of it’s product (once again, check this page and this page on their web site for the details).

So, does anybody remember “when” Lotus Support stopped offering “Pay Per Incident” (if they ever did – I’m pretty sure that “yes” they did) and “why” they stopped offering that? Leave a message in the comments if you know the answers to those questions.

Conclusion?

Well, that was just a simple blog post … nothing really to write home about: it’s a simple question that I can’t find answer for easily.

Thanks for reading!

Marc

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