Hearing all the stories about ABD I would like to put my 2 cents in.
1) We have one of our two Procise sequencers ( The cLC seqeuncer) on
service contract. All maintenance we gladly do ourselves as well as
trouble shooting and most repairs. This includes bottle caps, plumbing,
valve blocks, anything we can handle. Major repairs or repairs we have not
done ourselves (not that many anymore) we call an engineer in regardless of
which instrument it is. I believe we have seen our engineer 3 times the
past year, onc eon the non-SC instrument, twice on the SC instrument. Both
call on the SC instrument were addressed in a few days (2 max), the non-SC
instrument took a week because the parts needed were not instock (I felt
this was fair since these were not commonly changed part. I think the key
to these visits was our abilites to troubleshoot the instrument before the
engineer came in.
2) Service with ABD or ABI has always been in a state of flux over the 11
years I have been "treating" thier instruments. Consumables/bad
parts/defective columns have been problems that are solved and reappear
later. All service engineers have been good, providing they have a clear
understanding what we expect done. If we call with a clear description of
the problem, make an attempt at our own troubleshooting, or be willing to
install a part ourselves to help out a time strapped engineer we get good
response from them.
3) We also have had an HP sequencer. Although the service engineer is very
competant (more competant that ABD's counterparts), they are disasterous as
far as solving problems in a timely fashion. We often get only HPLC
trained service engineers in to fix a sequencer system, with the engineer
not knowing what the sequencer is or what it does. Also there is no real
customer support, compared with ABD.
Guess my point is compared to thier competitor's, ABD seams alot
more competant in handling service. I usually try to spend our SC money on
parts I feel may give us problems in the long run (valve block on ABD,
switching valves on HP), and I try to rebuilt those parts that fail. The
way I look at it, these companies regard us customers, a small part of the
big pie; I consider these instruments the lifeblood of what we do so I
treat them so.
Joe
Joseph Fernandez
Associate Director
The Rockefeller university
Protein/DNA Technology Center
1230 York Ave. New York, NY 10021
Phone: (212)-327-8869
FAX : (212)-327-8620
email: fernaj@rockvax.rockefeller.edu
Lab Web Page: http://pdtc.rockefeller.edu