RANAC Monthly Support Contract - What Isn't Covered

We recently had a question about service contracts with RANAC and what they do and don't cover. The ideal answer, and the one I'd love to be able to give, is that we cover anything that might go wrong with your computer and software. But... unfortunately, that isn't the correct answer.

We live in a world where people don't play by the rules. Hackers try to get into databases to retrieve information they can sell to line their pockets illegally. They try to get onto your PC to capture your passwords and account numbers. They write viruses, Trojans, worms, etc, many written for no further gain than knowing they've made your day (or week or month or more) as miserable as it can get.

These guys have nothing else to do but spend all their time experimenting with new and innovative ways to make our lives miserable.

One problem is, the rest of us have jobs that preclude us from spending all of our time defending against such attacks. So they are bound to succeed sometimes.

Another problem is the fact that it's humans that use this equipment. Your front desk people, your nurses, your doctors are all human and they do things humans do. Like go to unsavory web sites. Or opening email from people they don't know. Or simply downloading screen savers that show puppies “just like theirs!”. Any of these actions can make your workstation inoperable.

As the holders of the service contracts, we have no control over either hackers or employees. We can't tell your people how to use their system, although we do “suggest”, and we can't threaten hackers with anything meaningful enough to get them to stop.

We also have no control over your other vendors, who might see a need to change something about your system to suit their needs. Oftentimes resulting in all or portions of your programs not working correctly (changing your broadband carrier is a biggie in this category).

We'd love to be able to flip a switch and rid your computer of a virus, but the truth is, some of these are very nasty and can take hours to fix, if at all. I wish that modifying your network settings to accommodate the new broadband provider you contracted with was simple and required no time or effort on our part. I wish that the new app you downloaded hadn't overwritten all the settings for your remote printer, but that happens sometimes. I'm hoping that you're seeing the gist of the point here.

In a nutshell, we place a working system in your office that has manufacturer's warranty on the hardware and our warranty on about everything else and will support this configuration as long as it isn't changed and the hardware warranty remains intact. Any of the above scenarios indicates a change that we can't cover for free.

So, I wish I could just say we cover everything, but that's just impossible. I'll take a line from one of my other articles (I'm sure you've read them all) and say that if the system is used exactly as it's supposed to be used, as a business tool and nothing else, your chances of needing support that isn't under contract will be GREATLY reduced if not eliminated.

- Ivan Tuttle -
Systems / Support Manager
wecare@ranac.com
Support Line:� 317.848.2266
Toll Free: 800.875.0141