Re: Question about SLAs
On 2/9/07, Steve Rubin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does that mean you can take them to small claims court if they don't pay you the agreed SLA credits? Most contracts [in the U.S. today with largish to large corporations] have an arbitration clause ...though they shouldn't. Arbitration isn't, as far as I know, one of the official branches of government. I always find it rather contrary to logic that a contract, which is governed by the U.S. court system, can be written not to be covered by the U.S. court system. What an amazing loophole for corporate legal that is. (ObExperience: Every *forced* arbitration decision out of the 200+ I've researched has been in favor of the original contract writer -- the service provider and not its customer. The only arbitration settlements I've seen go the other way were only voluntarily moved to arbitration; one pretty major such settlement was made into a movie about a large energy company) -- -- Todd Vierling [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Question about SLAs
An SLA is a contract. A contract is... a contract. Does that mean you can take them to small claims court if they don't pay you the agreed SLA credits? --Michael Dillon
RE: Question about SLAs
I have a couple of suggestions: 1. Document, document, document. We use our internal ticketing system to document carrier issues, and actually have a customer created for each of our circuits, so that the history is readily available on a circuit-by-circuit basis. 2. Call trouble tickets in for everything, and record the ticket numbers. Follow up, get names, etc. All the stuff we know we should do, but often times forget to do in the heat of the moment. 3. Pay all of your bill except for the disputed portion. Include with every payment a SLA CREDIT REQUEST form that you complete, detailing the reasons why you feel you are owed a credit, including the ticket history, etc. Then, every month, include that documentation, and copies of all other correspondence you've sent... until it is resolved. 4. Don't hesitate to escalate your issues up the chain. A simple: I'm getting no where with you and need to speed to someone more senior sometimes works. I've also used, with varying degrees of success, Let's get someone higher up than you on the phone, because I doubt you're paid enough to deal with the crap I'm about to dish out. 5. If they're reasonably close (and this has worked wonders for me!), gather up all your documentation, and take a day trip to their office. It is pretty hard to ignore you when you're sitting in their lobby. 6. If all else fails, sue them. We did this very successfully against MCI, got a TRO, then an injunction, and finally reached a settlement that included the credits we were due as well as a cash payment because of our grief and aggravation. Best of luck, --tlf
RE: Question about SLAs
Absolutely, so long as the amount in controversy doesn't exceed the small claims limit in your jurisdiction. If it does, off to regular court. An SLA is a contract. A contract is... a contract. Does that mean you can take them to small claims court if they don't pay you the agreed SLA credits? --Michael Dillon --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
RE: Question about SLAs
Absolutely, so long as the amount in controversy doesn't exceed the small claims limit in your jurisdiction. If it does, off to regular court. And the nice thing about small claims court, if you meet the maximum limit of course, is that large companies often are lazy about dealing with the claims. If you are smaller than them, judges will often grant you a judgement when the big company doesn't show. At that point, with a court judgement in hand, it is easier to get the carrier's attention. SLA disputes are usually handled in the sales department by people whose paycheck is at least partly determined by sales quotas. Paying you the SLA hurts their paycheck. But a court judgement is usually handled by the legal department whose paycheck is 100% salary plus bonus for performance, which in the case of a lawyer would have to do with settling cases so that they do minimum damage to the company. In the case of a small claims court judgement, it is cheaper for them to pay you than to dispute the judgement. Of course, if you understand the supplier's internal issues from the beginning, then you can usually escalate it to the right people to resolve the problem before it gets to court. For instance, sales management usually have the bonus/quota system rigged so that they can pay you your SLA but not get hurt in the paycheck. Don't bang your head against the wall. If the supplier doesn't deal with issues promptly, work your way through different people in the organization until you find someone who can act to fix the problem. --Michael Dillon
RE: Question about SLAs
The other nice thing about small claims is that the judgment is just as real and enforceable as those from the big boy courts. About 10 or so years ago, we got into a dispute with a carrier where we co-lo'd some equipment. Went to small claims court, got a judgment of a few thousand dollars, didn't get paid So we went down on a Friday afternoon to the co-lo (this was in Toledo, so there was some interim step we had to do to make the judgment enforceable across state lines, but I don't recall what the step was), let ourselves and the sheriff in with our access code, and started unhooking some Cisco gear that belonged to the carrier. We had a check in about 2 hours. :-) And the nice thing about small claims court, if you meet the maximum limit of course, is that large companies often are lazy about dealing with the claims. If you are smaller than them, judges will often grant you a judgment when the big company doesn't show. At that point, with a court judgment in hand, it is easier to get the carrier's attention. --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
Re: Question about SLAs
On Fri, Feb 09, 2007 at 08:32:10AM -0500, Fox,Thomas wrote: ... 3. Pay all of your bill except for the disputed portion. ... ... Along with all that good advice, this particular one may bite you back. Consult legal experts in the field. -- Joe Yao --- This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.
Re: Question about SLAs
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does that mean you can take them to small claims court if they don't pay you the agreed SLA credits? --Michael Dillon Most contracts have an arbitration clause and in my experience small claims courts judges get confused by anything high-tech and will use the arbitration clause to get out of thinking about it.
RE: Question about SLAs
On February 9, 2007 at 09:41 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: An SLA is a contract. A contract is... a contract. Does that mean you can take them to small claims court if they don't pay you the agreed SLA credits? Oh I'm certain you could if you wanted to be bothered, it's a contract with a promise of value like any other. Absolutely nothing unusual or even very difficult to understand unless it gets into a real technical pissing match that confuses the referee. But that's all a crap shoot at best and time-consuming. One reason to always avoid direct legal action is that even if you get what you're due it's exceedingly rare to be awarded legal or other expenses. Expect only the prima facie value. Despite common folklore it's just not done, that's the cost of not figuring out some other way to settle the matter as far as the court is concerned. In fact, at least here in MA, I don't believe a small claims court has any authority to award either legal fees (and even if you don't bring a lawyer it might be a good idea to rack up a coupla hours with your lawyer to make sure you're using the right lingo and statutes etc), or punitive damages tho they can award some direct costs like if you had to (reasonably) pay a moving company to move some object in question, something like that, and you'd better have a receipt and it better not be a normal expense (like don't bother asking for bus fare or gasoline for your car or phone calls or other incidentals.) I'd just say you want to go to legal means for things like this only as a very last resort and maybe not even then. What you want to do is figure out ways to raise the stakes in a way to make them into better people even if it goes entirely against their nature. -- -Barry Shein The World | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Login: Nationwide Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: Question about SLAs
Steve Rubin wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does that mean you can take them to small claims court if they don't pay you the agreed SLA credits? --Michael Dillon Most contracts have an arbitration clause and in my experience small claims courts judges get confused by anything high-tech and will use the arbitration clause to get out of thinking about it. Don't blame small claims courts. Bigger courts have avoided executing their office around tech or big money issues, IME (in my experience). I've seen judges make wrong decisions because the burden on the defendant (would have had to post a bond to do the appeal) seemed too great. $2,000, $200,000 or $20,000,000 -- if you are the one to get paid, you will usually be happier in a court that handles matters of that size regularly. DJ
RE: Question about SLAs
On February 9, 2007 at 08:32 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Fox,Thomas) wrote: All good stuff (you can find the note) but I'd like to point out: 3. Pay all of your bill except for the disputed portion. Include with every payment a SLA CREDIT REQUEST form that you complete, detailing the reasons why you feel you are owed a credit, including the ticket history, etc. Then, every month, include that documentation, and copies of all other correspondence you've sent... until it is resolved. Read your contract carefully, it often disallows exactly this and allows them to apply payments as they see fit which means they can treat your account delinquent and proceed that way even if you believe you're due a credit. I also believe the law tends to agree with that, as a rule of thumb, you can't withhold a priori, except in specific cases like tenant law where an immediately dangerous condition persists due to landlord negligence, broken furnace in winter, etc. That is, it require more urgency than just I think I'm due this. But, IANAL, and in practice it might of course force the issue since neither side is likely to sue anyhow unless a lot of money is involved. -- -Barry Shein The World | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Login: Nationwide Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
RE: Question about SLAs
Find a new vendor is certainly one solution. Regards, chad From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Barry Shein Sent: Thu 2/8/2007 3:00 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Question about SLAs Other than give them the bum's rush! what do you do when a vendor is a PITA about SLAs for outages? Obviously there's not enough on the table to get lawyers involved, but it's aggravating when first they act like they lost your SLA request, then claim their logs don't match your logs in some significant way, then try to avoid returning calls to find out what got decided about disputes I guess hoping you'll give up, etc. It's lousy game theory if the vendor just wants to insist their logs are very different than the customer's (highly detailed logs), for example, short of bolting, which there might be other reasons to not want to do except as a last resort, like the cost would be a lot more than the SLAs in question. But where's the leverage? I hope this is operational enough for this list, if not feel free point me somewhere else. -- -Barry Shein The World | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com http://www.theworld.com/ Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Login: Nationwide Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: Question about SLAs
On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:09:34 PST, Chad Skidmore said: Find a new vendor is certainly one solution. Your current vendor probably knows how much it would cost for you to move to another vendor (quite possibly to more significant digits than *you* know). They also know exactly how much they're making/losing on SLA issues, and what percent of the move cost you're willing to tolerate - there's probably very few of us that can get away with being righteous and principled and spending $100K on a move to a new vendor over a $980 SLA issue. And even those of us who *can* do that probably can't do it a second time anytime soon. Of course, YMMV - spending $25K to get out of a contract with somebody who's already shafted you for $12K of SLA rebates and shows no sign of stopping is probably justifiable by almost all of us But I think Barry was asking specifically about the vendor who nickels and dimes you precisely because they know it's not enough to make a business case for moving. pgpEIZZ43Mdit.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Question about SLAs
Agreed, any termination liability is something to consider. You also need to consider the impact to your business that the SLA violations is causing and how that might translate to dollars. Documentation is going to be key if the vendor is nickel and diming you. If you have solid documentation of a pattern of behavior that is contrary to the spirit (and hopefully letter) of your SLA the vendor is probably not going to push the termination liability. They may not refund for SLA violations but they also would probably not push the termination liability too far. SLA claims can turn into a game of chicken at times. If you honestly feel your position is solid, don't blink. Good luck, Chad -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 7:29 PM To: Chad Skidmore Cc: Barry Shein; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Question about SLAs On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:09:34 PST, Chad Skidmore said: Find a new vendor is certainly one solution. Your current vendor probably knows how much it would cost for you to move to another vendor (quite possibly to more significant digits than *you* know). They also know exactly how much they're making/losing on SLA issues, and what percent of the move cost you're willing to tolerate - there's probably very few of us that can get away with being righteous and principled and spending $100K on a move to a new vendor over a $980 SLA issue. And even those of us who *can* do that probably can't do it a second time anytime soon. Of course, YMMV - spending $25K to get out of a contract with somebody who's already shafted you for $12K of SLA rebates and shows no sign of stopping is probably justifiable by almost all of us But I think Barry was asking specifically about the vendor who nickels and dimes you precisely because they know it's not enough to make a business case for moving.
RE: Question about SLAs
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 An SLA is a contract. A contract is... a contract. Read it carefully. :-) - - ferg - -- Chad Skidmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Agreed, any termination liability is something to consider. You also need to consider the impact to your business that the SLA violations is causing and how that might translate to dollars. Documentation is going to be key if the vendor is nickel and diming you. If you have solid documentation of a pattern of behavior that is contrary to the spirit (and hopefully letter) of your SLA the vendor is probably not going to push the termination liability. They may not refund for SLA violations but they also would probably not push the termination liability too far. SLA claims can turn into a game of chicken at times. If you honestly feel your position is solid, don't blink. Good luck, Chad - -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 7:29 PM To: Chad Skidmore Cc: Barry Shein; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Question about SLAs On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:09:34 PST, Chad Skidmore said: Find a new vendor is certainly one solution. Your current vendor probably knows how much it would cost for you to move to another vendor (quite possibly to more significant digits than *you* know). They also know exactly how much they're making/losing on SLA issues, and what percent of the move cost you're willing to tolerate - there's probably very few of us that can get away with being righteous and principled and spending $100K on a move to a new vendor over a $980 SLA issue. And even those of us who *can* do that probably can't do it a second time anytime soon. Of course, YMMV - spending $25K to get out of a contract with somebody who's already shafted you for $12K of SLA rebates and shows no sign of stopping is probably justifiable by almost all of us But I think Barry was asking specifically about the vendor who nickels and dimes you precisely because they know it's not enough to make a business case for moving. [snip] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.5.3 (Build 5003) wj8DBQFFzAbKq1pz9mNUZTMRAqTkAKCuVOT8/ZMIWeWlh05YTfbxXFouKgCgm0Li 56DDOcg1G9HzrlM7kzcMtxE= =i2LJ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(at)netzero.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
