[c-nsp] Cisco TAC issues - can someone from Cisco enlighten me on this?

[William McCall]

I would advise you to make sure to fill out the eval among other
things. This is a situation where I'd put all 1's. Make sure to put in
the comments too.

Those evals (known as BINGOs internally) are a big deal and may help
you with getting some motion.

Of course, follow up with your AM and see what they can do.

On 9/20/09, Steve Fischer <sfischer1967 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Last Thursday evening, at around midnight, in the course of my organizations
> network maintenance, we had not one but two of our core 6500 switches go
> into ROMMON (after being rebooted with new code, and being operational for
> approximately 45 minutes)at the same time and for no apparent reason.
> Attempts to reboot the devices were in vain, and attempts to roll-back also
> appeared to be in vain, so I called the Cisco TAC and opened a P1 case.
> Immediately, the call was routed over to India.  I was in a loud data
> center, and the engineers accent was very thick, to the point I could not
> hear him over the background noise, much less understand him.  Other than
> asking for a webex session - made impossible by the fact that the network
> core is down, he offers nothing in the way of assistance.
>
>
>
> I asked to have the case transferred to a native-English speaking engineer.
> Call transferred to Indian engineer #2, and the communications issues
> persist.  I have two core switches down, and am becoming more than a little
> concerned.  Same result - engineer really offers nothing in the way of
> assistance, and I again, request the call to be transferred to a
> native-English speaking engineer.  Enter Indian engineer #3.  Now let me
> state here for the record that I am in no way questioning the competence of
> the three gentlemen I spoke to, nor do I have any xenophobic tendencies, but
> I would like to make a few points here:
>
>
>
> 1.       If I cannot understand the support engineer, it will be difficult
> for him to assist me, regardless of his skill level.
>
> 2.       Having a native-English speaking engineer available would have been
> at this time very disarming, and calming in the midst of for what was for me
> a crisis.  In the medical field, they call it bed-side manner, which would
> have been of immense value given the crisis I was facing.
>
> 3.       My organization spends well over $100K annually in Cisco
> maintenance.
>
>
>
> Case transferred to Indian engineer #4.  Now, while this was occurring, I
> called Cisco's TAC and asked the case be re-queued to an engineer in North
> America.  I was told that there were no support engineers on duty in North
> America.  Now, I'm getting upset, and more than just a little. Also, in the
> meantime, it was suggested that I remove one of the CompactFlash cards from
> one of the 6500's that was still working (we have 4 total), and try to boot
> from the IOS image on it.  Upon ejecting the Flash card, that 6500 too, went
> immediately into ROMMON.  So, now, we have 3 of 4 core switches down.  The
> entire data center is down, and are one step away from the phone system
> going down as well - which indeed did happen.  As we now have all four cores
> down, the options of rebooting them with the old code. One by one, through
> all four cores, they are rolled back, and finally the network comes up.  Let
> me say the fourth engineer suggested this, by prior to that, I had concluded
> this was going to be the best course of action.
>
>
>
> Now, back up two weeks.  I had a Cisco Works issue at around 3:00PM EST, and
> open a case for it.  The call is transferred to.wait for it.India.  So, it
> doesn't appear that the time of an issue completely influences to what Cisco
> support center a call is routed.  As a matter of fact, the support engineer
> for that particular call informed me it was 2:00AM where he was.
>
>
>
> This leads me to several questions that perhaps someone from Cisco
> monitoring this forum could answer.
>
>
>
> 1.       Given the stature of the 6500 platform within Cisco's product line,
> and given the severity of the issue I was experiencing, is there no Cisco
> Support Center in North America staffed 24X7X365 to deal with such issues?
>
> 2.       Was the only option available to me a webex session?  It seemed
> strange that the engineer would even ask for that, given that this was
> reported as a network down emergency.
>
> 3.       Upon asking the call be transferred to a native English speaking
> engineer, why was the call routed to 3 more Indian engineers? Rather than
> informing me that no native English-speaking engineers were available, why
> did I have to request this three more times?  I find it INCREDIBLE that an
> organization of Cisco's size could not find a single native English-speaking
> engineer to assist me in this crisis concerning their flagship product.
>
> 4.       Does Cisco as a company understand the value of being disarming to
> a stressed-out client in the midst of a crisis, and how much providing a
> support engineer who can clearly and effectively communicate with the
> customer?
>
>
>
> If I were to grade Cisco on this support call, and to my knowledge, this was
> the first network down call I've opened since I've been with this
> organization, I'd give Cisco an F.no, an F-.  This was an epic-fail for
> Cisco, to the point that my organization is considering dumping their
> support all together, and going with a third party.  There is just no way I
> should have been bounced to four Indian engineers when after the first one,
> and the second one, I calmly explained the rationale behind requesting a
> native English-speaking engineer.
>
>
>
> What can Cisco do to make this right?
>
>
>
> 1.       A written letter of apology.  I don't blame the engineers for this
> - they are likely highly competent support engineers.  Cisco failed to
> provide an engineer who could communicate with me clearly and concisely.
>
> 2.       Provide an additional one year of maintenance coverage on all four
> of our 6500's free of charge, as that pales by comparison to the amount of
> money lost by my company for the two hours our network was down, and I was
> unable to reach an engineer who could effectively communicate with me.
>
> 3.       Staff a support center in North America 24X7X365 geared to deal
> with exactly the issue I encountered.  A P1 case should be treated
> differently than a P3 case, and this case wasn't, at least not from my
> perspective.
>
> 4.       When it became clear that the communications issues that existed
> between the support engineer and myself precluded progress being made to
> resolve the issue, and I requested the case be escalated, escalate the case.
> I DO blame the engineer for that - not escalating the case when requested to
> do so.
>
> 5.       Stop making the first course of action being requesting a webex.
> There will be scenarios where that won't be possible, as was the case
> Thursday evening.  Engineer 1 seemed to give up when webex wasn't an option.
>
>
>
> I am interested in any and all feedback from the community on this.  If
> there is someone within Cisco (other than my salesperson, who's heard this
> before from me.on more than one occasion) who I can send this to, and can
> respond to it, it would also be appreciated.
>
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-- 
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William McCall, CCIE #25044