Hello all,

we too have been successfully had all of our IBM equipment (xSeries,
pSeries, storage, SVC, tape libraries, SAN directors) handeled by a
TPM for years. The rates were very affordable, service was rather good,
technician was on site to any of our locations in under 30min. Back and
forth in about an hour, if a part turned out to be DOA, which seldomly
happended. This year we - here in germany - were too forced^H^H^H^H^H^H
welcomed back into the motherly hug of big blue. Since then, our rates
have trippled, some hardware couldn't be placed under maintenance due
to EOL (a fact that didn't bother the TPM at all) to begin with, service
has worsened considerably, almost any part has to be shipped in from
Rotterdam (8+ hours) due to cutbacks in logistic, DOA and wrong part
delivery rates have skyrocketed. Our TS3584 is literally eating volumes
(tearing off leader pins or scrambling tape and losing the leader pin
inside the cartridge) day by day, since there was a field notice trigger-
ed firmware update while still under warranty. We didn't have those kind
of ridiculous troubles with the previous TS3310s and definitely not with
the even earlier TS3484. And of course IBM is not even responding to our
requests to replace the now damaged volumes according to their lifetime
warranty and general liability.
I really pity the IBM technicians and sales people who are well known
in our organization since the days of yore. They know about the issues
within IBM. They know about the rediculous earnings expectations from
overseas upper management. They know that IBMs service organization is
currently doing their best to ruin the business for all of IBM with any
customer possible just to meet their own expected quota. Still their hands
are tied and they can only watch the good ship IBM heading for that big
shiny iceberg ahead.
Of course in our case management also had to act, so i guess we too will
be spending our future bugets elsewhere ;-)

Best regards,

    Frank