Batboard

I freakin' hate that thing! We have a contract from Motorola to service one here locally, and we are getting reamed. $69.00 per month, and I just spent 4 hours out at the site on this latest trip. Every time you sneeze in it's general direction Motorola is wanting you to realign it. And it seems it's never really off. The last time we had to look at it, between me and another tech (who has since quit) we had 20 man hours into it, about half of those OT! The replacement CCM that we had in stock was bad, so they said they would send one and it could be picked up at the airport. Went out at midnight, and the plane never showed up- flight cancelled. Called the Motorola tech support and the lady gets all irate about it. had to go out again the next morning to get the thing at the airport. The worst part is, you call the tech support center and start talking to a certain person. Have to get off the phone to do what they ask you to do. Call them back, and it's shift change time and you get a different person, who of course wants you to start all over at the beginning of the process. The bad thing was, when they sent us the paper work they disputed all the hours we had billed. We told them why (multiple trips to airport etc) but they refused to pay us any more than 4 extra regular hours. The question- does anyone know how a Motorola SS can cancel this contract?

And your $69/month probably shows up late on your autopay!

Every contract has a term & eventually has to be renewed. Just call up the Motorola service rep and tell them that you want better terms NOW or when it expires they put that contract where the sun doen't shine & they can take care of it themselves from the closest COSC.

Oops - wait a minute - they sold all the COSC's. Oh, well - then they can send out an FTR. Oops - they RIF'd most of them.

We take care of 5 seperate "Bell-Ardis" sites (the Gemini stations which were mentioned above). Overall, we make money on them. It's rare that we get called out on them, and I don't find the phone support to be "unhelpful", rather, the opposite. But, I do agree with the "shift change" comment. Sometimes aggravating. There have been many people that have left on the system support side in the last couple of years, so that complicates things. Quite often, I know more than the phone techs do, so perhaps they tend to listen to me more than others. We did go through a period of "growing pains" with them 6-7 years ago, where we probably lost money on them, but it all paid off in the end. Call-outs are now quite few & far between, and 90% of the time it's a CCM, which we always carry in stock. The few times multiple trips are required, we swallow the cost, and they appreciate it, and cut us some slack for future calls.
As far as cancelling the contract, read yours carefully. I believe both sides have the option of terminating the contract at any time with either 30 or 90 days notice.

Todd

xmo wrote:Oops - wait a minute - they sold all the COSC's. Oh, well - then they can send out an FTR. Oops - they RIF'd most of them.

There are quite a few FTRs still around. I worked with one a couple of weeks ago on a problem. Very helpful gentleman.

George

We have two very qualified FTRs right in our local Motorola office...but we appear to be the exception, since they constantly are travelling to other areas of the country to aid in setting up/troubleshooting systems. Kind of spoiled we are here, I suppose.

Todd

UPDATE- in the process of solving their latest problem I noticed there was a long run of coax that had broke free of it's tiedowns and was flapping in the breeze, and in West Texas the breezes can be fierce this time of year. Started at about 150 feet and was loose at least up to 250 feet. It just so happened that the Gemini station had high reflected power, and they were reporting no traffic in or out. Well, guess whose coax that is? Yep..........It took me half the day to convince the guy on the other end that the coax or antenna had to be the problem. Finally I put the station on an old SMR antenna that wasn't being used and BINGO! the station is now looking good. They are sending new coax and antenna, as they don't want to pay for more than one climb. Coax arrived Thursday, antenna hasn't shown up yet, in the meantime they have called me 20 times to ask what the job status is. Yes, this contract WILL be cancelled.

Did you ahve a chance to test the antenna and line using a TDR?

George

Just out of curiosity, what is a Gemini station? I have never heard of these before. Thanks!

A type of Motorola Base Station used for certain two-way data systems. Here in Nova Scotia, the ones I've seen are used in a two-way wireless data system called Bell-Ardis. They are roughly in-between the size of the Micor & MSR2000 repeaters, but they don't seem to share any common parts with them.

Todd

Here the system formerly know as IBM-ARDIS is now owned by Motient. ( http://www.motient.com ). They are the service provider for the Yahoo! wireless messenger among other things. They have a contract with Motorola for the nationwide service. Mot Central Dispatch takes the calls for service and dispatches a tech from the local MSS.

The 800Mhz Gemini station has to be the biggest pain-in-the-a$$ base /\/\ ever made. You have to do a full PM on the base on every service call you make, even if it is just an antenna problem. If you are fast, the PM takes about 45 minutes. Then you have to call in for verification from Motient to see if is working. If not, then you are at the mercy of the tech on the phone and what they want you to replace. It is not uncommon that the spare in the FRU kit is bad. Then they want to NFO (next flight out) the part to you. The process is long and involved.

There is a very recent version of Windows-base Gemini service software on MOL. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm still keeping my 386 laptop with Datatest software around.

OUR SHOP HAS HAD PROBLEMS FOR YEARS . RIGHT NOW THE STATION IS OFF THE AIR BECAUSE THE LEASE RAN OUT AND THE AC METER HAS BEEN PULLED. AND YEAS THEY SUCK

Zaputil wrote:Here the system formerly know as IBM-ARDIS is now owned by Motient. ( http://www.motient.com ). They are the service provider for the Yahoo! wireless messenger among other things. They have a contract with Motorola for the nationwide service. Mot Central Dispatch takes the calls for service and dispatches a tech from the local MSS.

The 800Mhz Gemini station has to be the biggest pain-in-the-a$$ base /\/\ ever made. You have to do a full PM on the base on every service call you make, even if it is just an antenna problem. If you are fast, the PM takes about 45 minutes. Then you have to call in for verification from Motient to see if is working. If not, then you are at the mercy of the tech on the phone and what they want you to replace. It is not uncommon that the spare in the FRU kit is bad. Then they want to NFO (next flight out) the part to you. The process is long and involved.

There is a very recent version of Windows-base Gemini service software on MOL. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm still keeping my 386 laptop with Datatest software around.

Yes! You feel my pain. Bad thing is we are supposed to have Datatest software somewhere but I can't find it, so I have to do the Procomm routine which increases the "pain in the ass" factor by 10.

RocketNJ wrote:Did you have a chance to test the antenna and line using a TDR?

George

No. We don't have one. We are a small town, low-rent type operation. My method was simple. First, when looking at their antenna attached to the antenna port of my service monitor on spectrum, I see nothing. Zilch. Not even cell phone trafic. Take theirs off, put my little stubby on, and I see traffic on the spectrum. Second, the fact that the few days before they called in the problem the wind had been kicking up to 25-35 mph with gusts up to 50. Not uncommon in West Texas in April. Like I said the coax is loose from about 150' to 250 ', and their antenna is at 260'. As best as I can determine I am 99.9% certain the loose coax is theirs. I'm guessing there's a 1/2" Superflex jumper between the antenna and the 7/8" that pulled loose from the antenna, or something like that. We have a climber that was ready to climb and investigate (and tie down the coax whether it was theirs or not) but the guy at Motient didn't want to take the chance of paying for two climbs. Hence, we are waiting for the replacement antenna/coax so if it needs replacing it will be here. Finally, the ultimate test- a known good antenna/coax (off a SMR that was no longer being used) is working like a champ for them. It's GOT to be their antenna or coax.

i see motient is the same all over the country ... has anybody taken that motient class put on by motorola ..
i thought it was a little boring but full decent info ....
i found that new datatest for windows a pain to use but the alarm decoder is a pretty nice....