We have received a quote for a hardware maintenance contract from an
outfit (IMC) front-ending DecisionOne. The price is an estimated 45%
less than we are paying IBM for the equivalent services (we are
currently bundling the HWMA, SWMA and Alerts). My last experience
with DecisionOne was not very positive. Admittedly, that was somewhat
ancient history: they were DecisionServcom at the time, and the
machine was an Advanced 36 :-> IMC has promised references, but told
us that D1 notifies customers ahead of time that they will be so used.
That raises the risk in my mind that the supplied names will be
cherry-picked. How about some recent feedback from DVCUG members on
D1 as an iSeries hardware maintenance provider, specifically: call
handling; dispatch time; time to repair; quality of service;
availability of parts; finger-pointing on hardware vs. OS root causes.
Many thanks in advance.

Scott Miller
Mgr IS Support
Unimin Corporation