William Herrin wrote:
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 12:34 AM, Bill Woodcock<woody@pch.net> wrote:
Am I over-thinking this?
The SLA's I've looked at promise me that if their service is hard down for a week (with no ambiguity whatsoever) they'll credit my bill for upwards of 2% of the $50k/year or so I spend on the Internet connection for my mutli-million dollar online service.
I'm really surprised anyone considers this an SLA, or anything special in a business contract. I automatically expect to get a credit of 1.923% if the service were not provided for a period of 168 hours, no questions asked and no SLA required. When service is simply not provided, there's nothing special about not having to pay for it. I don't know of any business where you can have a contract that requires you to pay your monthly/annual fee for services when said services are not provided. If you have a housekeeping or lawn service that is supposed to come once a week, and you have an annual contract with them for this service at $50/week, and they miss a week (provide no service) you don't pay them anyway for that missed week. You don't need an SLA in your contract with them to have this right to withhold payment for the period of time when the services are not provided *at all*. An SLA comes into play when a service is degraded below the quality you contracted for. What credit do they give you when you have 168 hours of degraded service, e.g. 50% of the service level you specified in your RFQ? That's where your SLA comes in. The SLA specifies at what point your service is considered "degraded" (how much below the contracted service level, and how long of a time period is required before it is considered below grade) and what $credit you may receive when you are provided some service, but not to the level specified in your contract. jc