IBM Under Fire For Warranty Program

NSN members discussed dropping IBM service authorization as a membership requirement late last year because of costs in the vendor's authorization program, solution providers said. They stopped short of voting against IBM but made it clear they want the manufacturer to make changes.

Last week, Ingram Micro Vice President of Channel Development Bob Stegner met with IBM executives at PartnerWorld 2002 to address solution provider concerns. "They were very receptive to everything I wanted to talk about," he said.

IBM is too important a vendor to drop as a required authorization, he said. Ingram Micro's NSN boasts 420 solution provider members and aims to establish a nationwide web of providers capable of servicing any community or technology.

"My goal is to position NSN to help the major manufacturers' services programs on opportunities that may not be large enough for them. That's where we can leverage our size and strength," Stegner said.

IBM currently requires solution providers to purchase a $1,500 CD-ROM containing warranty training and reference information from IBM each year to keep their service authorizations. But small VARs in tertiary markets generally do not handle enough IBM warranty claims to justify the cost, several NSN members said.

"A lot of it is obsolete information that we can get off the Web for free," said Arlin Sorensen, president of SCCI, Harlan, Iowa. "It takes a lot of warranty work to get your $1,500 back."

IBM also has a stringent reimbursement auditing process that compensates partners based on their customer satisfaction scores, which concerns many members, said Ray Morton, director of technical services at Daily Computers, Clarksburg, Md.

"Even if you solve the problem, the [end user may not be happy with another part of the process, so it's still a negative score. There's no channel to protest that," Morton said. "[IBM executives need to take into consideration different programs for smaller players in smaller markets; otherwise, they will alienate resellers in markets where they have people that want to buy IBM but have no one to service them," he said.

"If we work at IBM viewing us as a true national service network, maybe we can affect the price of the CD," Ingram Micro's Stegner said. "What we might be able to do is say, 'I'm a reseller with 400-plus locations' rather than, 'We are 400 small resellers.' And Ingram Micro will take on the task of working directly with the manufacturers to train these guys."