IBM was called to our datacenter to replace a tape drive for a collocated IBM Power i520 box. We have several BladeCenters of our own, and quite a few blade servers. Anyway, 2 IBM Engineers came in to replace the Ultrium tape drive (here come the "how many engineers does it take... jokes"). They then proceeded to pull the serial numbers off our Blades and then call them in (without permission) to find that there is no IBM Hardware Maintenance coverage.
Then they started badgering our engineer as to who to talk to about the coverage - even though we explicitly told them we keep plenty of spares and don't need coverage on the old blades - it would cost more than the blade itself.
They had no business touching or pulling the serial numbers on those Blades. They are our property, not the clients', and just because they were called in for a colo box does not mean they can touch everything else.
The consultant we were working with actually filed a complaint to IBM, and the response from the IBM manager was the following:
He said they did nothing wrong and that once they were allowed in the cage, any equipment within was fair game to them. He kept asking why we had a problem with them checking the serial numbers. His attitude was very surprising.
When asked how to prevent this in the future since they are only ones to service the area, he said that when an IBM Engineer is given access to the cage he should be instructed that he is to service only the piece of equipment he was called in for and that he is not given permission to the other equipment in the cage.
Epic fail. This is exactly why we don't buy hardware maintenance coverage from IBM.
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