$Bela Lubkin writes:
$> At SCO Forum this week, I asked some of our sales people to explain our
$> "competitive trade-in" programs. Here's what I learned.
$
$Thanks for the info.
Thanks _very_ much to Bela, and to a few other SCO insiders, who have
provided me (and no doubt many others) with clarifications on much of
this stuff.
$> o Prices *are* discountable if you are a dealer, distributor etc.
$How? None of the distributors I deal with (Merisel, EMJ, Truger) have
$heard of this program; if it is discountable, is it offered through
$distribution or direct from SCO?
Most of SCO's distributors in Canada simply won't do upgrades
anyway. I've only found two who will - EMJ and Truger. Time to
air my dirty laundry again :-)
I've been trying to upgrade an old 3.2.2 to OS Enterprise 5 for
a couple of months now. The folks in our company who handle the
biz stuff tried Merisel and a few others and found they all said
they don't do SCO upgrades. We ended up dealing with EMJ.
First, there was no wording that I could find anywhere on the 3.2.2
box to say how many users it was for. I believe it's an unlimited,
but all EMJ could say was "Oh, well, we didn't carry SCO back then
and so we don't know what you have." They said they'd get back to us.
When they didn't, I tried calling a friend at SCO Canada, who
has always been very helpful, and he couldn't 100% confirm that it was
unlimited, but said he believed it was. On that basis, we called
EMJ back and placed an order.
We placed that order at least three times over several weeks,
and it's _still_ not on their books. The last time we went through
this, I spoke with one of their sales guys and told him _exactly_
what I wanted, based on the announcement in comp.unix.sco.announce
(which, unfortunately, didn't have part numbers - and the EMJ rep
had the same announcement in front of him and no part numbers).
He promised he'd get the part numbers and prices, and call back one
of our biz guys.
That was late in the week before Forum. I got back from Forum on
Monday and asked the person who was supposed to have been called with
the information what happened. EMJ never called back. %$%#$& 'em;
they just lost an order.
Today, I spoke with someone from Truger. He know *exactly*
what the options were, how much they cost, availability, etc.,
and in about five minutes we had it all sorted out. I trust that
my software will be on its way shortly. Each time I told him of
some item I needed, he gave me both the dealer price and the
list price.
Earlier this month, I'd received a voice mail from someone at
SCO Canada wanting to follow up on this mess and make sure I'd been
taken care of. We had a friendly chat today (no sense tearing a
strip off him; he's being helpful, and it's EMJ who are useless).
He agreed with me that the first cut of SCO's upgrade-to-OS5
policy was pretty poor, confusing, and not well-liked by customers
or by the channel, and I agreed with him that the second take is
much better. He said many within SCO Canada had been complaining
about how confusing the upgrade policy was, and I assured him that
it wasn't just SCO Canada which had a problem with it. He said he
hoped that more of the SCO distributors would start handling upgrades
now that SCO has simplified the system. That would be nice. We
can buy brand new SCO product through distributors with which we
already have a significant relationship; it would be nice not to
have to go elsewhere for upgrades.
So I think things are all moving smoothly now. If that turns
out to be the case, I know where to buy SCO upgrades in the
future - and I certainly know who I _won't_ be dealing with.
I want to emphasize that apart from the original, rather complex
upgrade structure, I have no bone to pick with SCO. Many people at
SCO, both in Santa Cruz and in Toronto, have offered to do whatever
they can to help me get my software. Thanks, guys - I do appreciate
it. It seems that it's the distributors who aren't up to the task.
Evan, if you're still having problems, give me a call at the
office and I'll see if I can figure out who exactly it was at
Truger who helped me out today. I don't know if he knows the
competitive upgrades very well, but if I had to guess, I'd expect
he probably does.
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Stephen M. Dunn, CNE, ACE, Sr. Systems Analyst, United System Solutions Inc.
104 Carnforth Road, Toronto, ON, Canada M4A 2K7 (416) 750-7946 x251
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