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: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu [mailto:Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu] 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.