Thank you for communicating. I thought I was the only one out their
dealing with lengthy call times on PE service contracts. In the past three
years our average response time on alpha contracts has dropped from 48 hrs
to one week. I waited 3 weeks last February for service on our Procise and
nearly two months for a particular valve block to be built and issued to
us. I was told we were 65th in the country waiting for this block. Why
was production allowed to lag so significantly? This year I have has
significant problems with columns, especially one particular lot number
even though I was told I was the "only" one having problems. I know from
responses on the board that is not true.
I have much better response times from both Pharmacia and Biasensor, Inc.
when it comes to service calls. If PE doesn't think this is going to
affect instrumentation purchases in the future they need to think again.
My own personal theory is that Core Facilities are given lower priority
because we do not have the number of contracts and therefore financial
clout that industries do. I believe industry instruments are
preferencially serviced over ours when a conflict arises and an engineer
has to make a decision about who to service first because they know that is
where the big bucks are coming from. Unfortunantly this is a double wammy
for Core Facilities since we are the most affected by having a downed
instrument, i.e., we lose customers and potential income from the service
and we are required to pay top dollar for these service contracts. A down
394 at Amgen that has a room full of 394s is not as significant as a down
394 in a core lab.
I also have excellent PE service engineers, especially on the protein side,
and I believe they know who they are. I really think the problem is more
at the management level and how engineers are trained to prioritize and
interact with their clients. Several engineers have told me they are
overburdened with calls. In any event PE needs to listen to their
engineers and their clients to develop a better operational plan because
our needs are not being met and nobody will pay for less than optimal
service forever.
C.L. Owens
C.L. Owens
Molecular Biology Core Laboratory
W516, School of Medicine
2119 Abington Rd.
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH 44106
Tel: 216-368-6168
Fax: 216-368-8750