[51270] in Hotline Meeting
Followup to email from Kelin Whipple
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Naomi B. Schmidt)
Thu Jun 29 16:30:55 2000
Message-Id: <200006292030.QAA14172@mozart.mit.edu>
To: hotline@MIT.EDU, wjfitz@MIT.EDU
Cc: nschmidt@MIT.EDU, kxw@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 16:30:51 -0400
From: "Naomi B. Schmidt" <nschmidt@MIT.EDU>
Kelin Whipple and I had a telephone conversation regarding his
email. Here is what I told him:
For the FY2001 billing, starting with coverage July 1 2000, we
will change the database to reflect that all of his machines in
question have no hardware maintenance contract with us. They
should be charged only $350 during the billing that goes out this
summer. In January, shortly before the machines go off the
contract that Kelin has with SGI, he will write to hotline and
wjfitz and ask us to add hardware maintenance from Feb 1 through
the end of the fiscal year, prorated. At that time we will put
those machines under the Polaris contract.
As for the FY2000 charges that were JV'd last summer (what he
refers to as '99 charges), I told him that we'd see what we can do
about refunding the hardware maintenance part of the fees. I just
realized after I had spoken with him that we passed through most
of that money to the parts vendor when we put them under contract,
and thus the most that we might be able to return would be the
administrative costs that Hardware Services incurs for machines
under contract. Even that amount might not be able to be refunded
this late in the fiscal year.
I explained to Kelin that our billing process is such that we ask
customers to examine the invoice, sign it, and return it to us,
before we JV any money. Thus, the responsibility did lie with his
billing contact to correct that error. Reversing that error at
this point in the fiscal year is something that we are not
obligated to do, but would be a gesture of good will on our part.
The important thing is to make sure that the database is corrected
from now on.
Naomi
