Compaq comes under fire for poor customer care

Compaq has denied letting down end-users by failing to proactively alert them to hardware faults it already knew about.

The allegation comes from an IT director at a leading London-based financial institution following problems with Compaq ProLiant 5500 servers. His company purchased the boxes in June, but experienced "major problems" after ramping-up usage in July.

After contacting Compaq and finding out the problem was with Intel Xeon processors, he was sent a straightforward fix for the hardware fault.

The IT director, who prefers not to be named, told Silicon.com: "What puzzles me is why this information has not been made public. Compaq only seem to be doing so if the user has a problem, and are taking a 'let sleeping dogs lie' approach. I am astounded that companies like Intel and Compaq are not prepared to advise customers when such a serious and known problem exists - there is a fix available after all."

Intel said it deals with any chip faults via its original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and posts details on the Specification Updates section of its Web site. A spokesman said: "We publish errata and workarounds (where known) to our OEMs so they can implement the workarounds or take whatever action they deem necessary."

Compaq also noted two Web-based resources - Info Messenger and Insight Manager - which keep end-users abreast of upgrades, patches, and general fixes.

Referring to the firm's network of distributors and resellers, Tony Harvey, product marketing manager for industry standard servers at Compaq UK, said: "As far as proactive notification goes, we do some, but it's difficult because we work within a two tier and sometimes three tier structure."

He claimed direct vendor Dell also has problems staying in touch with every customer.

However, Mark Raphael, programme director at Meta Group, said: "You'd expect large corporate users to have interaction with OEMs. Compaq has made a big deal about being customer facing, but this shows there's a big difference between being a PC vendor and an enterprise vendor."