Support Snafu Trips Up Intel Partner

Mark Brown, CEO of Total Networking Solutions, Pennsville, N.J., said that because of lax technical support by Intel, he could lose a $1 million-plus managed services contract and faces hefty fines for breaching the customer's service-level agreement.

About six months ago, Total Networking sold the customer, a N.J. state-regulated nonprofit organization in the medical field, an Intel Storage System SS4000-E NAS system. The first system Intel sent didn't work, but the chip maker shipped a replacement within 10 days. The system ran without any problems until the morning of Tuesday, May 29, when the customer's MIS director tried to access data on the device and was locked out of the system.

After some troubleshooting, Brown decided the problem required support from Intel. He dialed the tech support number that Intel instructed him to call after the immediate post-sales support period for the system ended. Representatives at Intel's tech support center in Costa Rica told Brown that someone would call him back within an hour, but they repeatedly failed to do so after he had called the center a number of times, he said.

Brown then decided to recruit help from Intel's channel hot line. Although the channel support rep was very supportive, he informed Brown that he was unable to assist him in acquiring the technical support he needed from the overseas support center, Brown said.

"He said, 'With all due respect sir, my hands are tied,' " Brown said.

On Friday afternoon, nearly 59 hours later, Brown finally heard back from Intel's tech support team, which in 20 minutes gave him the solution necessary for the known firmware problem in the device, he said.

Unfortunately, that meant Brown had several days of work ahead of him to restore the customer's data, and by the time he finished, he was several days in breach of the SLA and faced fees to the tune of $60,000. It also meant that the three-year, $1.1 million managed services contract he signed with the customer in October 2006 was in jeopardy.

"If the 20-minute solution was provided to us on Tuesday of last week, we would have been done now," Brown said earlier this week. "I've never had to deal with an issue like this before."

Luckily, Brown may be able to salvage the contract with his customer, and Intel's channel support team this week has been working closely with him to resolve the matter.

Intel officials said they're investigating the support snafu. They also noted that the matter is an isolated incident and doesn't indicate any disconnect between the channel support teams and the overseas technical support center.

"We get quarterly reports about the Costa Rica center, as the tech support center has only been up for a year now, and it has been meeting and exceeding its customer satisfaction scores. So we think this is just a one-off kind of deal," said Shirley Turner, director of North America channel marketing for Intel.

"That said, with any partner, no matter how much they purchase, they're still selling an Intel box, and we take that very seriously. So we are looking into this," Turner added.