Hardware maint contract

It depends on what SMARTNet contract you have. No you can't just buy a
hardware option. They all come with phone and hardware support. Chances
are, your current contract is an 8x5 contract, meaning, Cisco does indeed
have 8 hours before they HAVE to contact you during the business week. It
sux, but yes they will stretch that out to the full 8 hours. As for the
competency of the techs....I'm surprised to hear that actually. Most I have
spoken with have been fairly bright and easy to work with. You can try
buying support from a 3rd party consulting agency in your area. Most good
firms have CCIE's on staff that can rip it apart and fix it in a matter of
minutes....if the consulting firm can't fix it, let them pay the big bucks
for quicker support from Cisco. That way you won't have to deal with it....

my 2 cents,
Aaron

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin" <kevinmeiningergmail.com>
To: <PIX_Firewallyahoogroups.com>;
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 10:03 AM
Subject: [PIX_Firewall] Hardware maint contract

> Hello all,
>
> can you tell me if there are any alternate options for maintaining any
> level of hardware support for our PIX 515E firewalls? We have 2 of
> them -- a primary and failover unit.
>;
> I came onboard with this company in the middle of the contract. I have
> used Cisco telephone support about 3 times so far and been completely
> disappointed each time. This was in comparision to the firewall
> support I was used to receiving from Global Technology Associates
> (non-Cisco) at my previous employer.
>
> Now the Cisco contract (they call it "SmartNet") is up for renewal...
> for our 2 boxes it's roughly $1500 for another year. They tell me this
> is the minimum service offering.
>
> I'd like to know if I can drop telephone support completely and only
> go with a very basic hardware warranty. Since we have our PIX's in a
> failover setup, I can justify even depot return service if necessary.
> There are local vendors who we can pay per incident on the support as
> needed.
&gt;
> My issues with Cisco telephone support are:
> 1) they don't seem to place any urgency on getting back with you-- in
> one incident the tech called greater than 8 hours after I placed the
> initial call, then proceeded to email me thereafter;
> 2) techs do not speak good English in my experience;
> 3) in one case, tech did not seem competent... I complained and got a
> manager, but this wasted a lot of time;
>;
> I'm told the value of these PIX's is about $3000 each if we had to
> replace them out-of-warranty.
>;
> Thanks for your help.
>; ::Kevin
&gt;
>
>
>
>
>
>
>;
>
&gt;
>
&gt; Yahoo! Groups Links
>;
>
&gt;
>
&gt;
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________
> This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
&gt; For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email
> __________________________________________________________
>