September 10, 2004

Clearly, I'm Missing Something

It's that time of year, and that time of year means that it is time for us to renew our Cisco support contract. You would think, Cisco being such a hip, with-it, connected company, that this would be as painless as spending money ever is.

Oh, and how wrong you would be.

First, you can't just walk up to Cisco and say, "We'd like to renew our support contract, please." Oh, no, you foolish little mortal, Cisco does not deal with the likes of you. You must go to your Cisco Partner, and they will pass your supplication along to Cisco for consideration.

Fine, whatever. We go to the company we buy a lot of our tech stuff from, and ask them, "We'd like to renew our support contract, please." And they say, sure, we'd love your money . . . and here's how it works:

  • We give our Cisco Partner our money.
  • The Cisco Partner calls Cisco, and tells Cisco that the Cisco Partner has our money.
  • Cisco contemplates this interesting tidbit of information, and gives the Cisco Partner a Very Important Number (VIN, for short).
  • The Cisco Partner then ships us this VIN in a box.
  • We then (I think) are supposed to go to Cisco's web site and type in this VIN.
  • At this point, our service contract is supposed to be renewed.

How is this superior to going to Cisco's web site, giving them our credit card number, and having our contract being renewed on the spot? Well, it's not, of course, but it's just the Cisco Way.

SonicWall used to do something remarkably similar, but they wised up and let you renew without having to buy a Very Important Number from a dealer, and having that VIN shipped to you in a box. Someday, maybe Cisco will figure out that this web thing is pretty cool for selling stuff.

posted 09:35