BD Survey results

From: william nostrom (slickwilli@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 11 1997 - 08:48:30 EST


Hi all.
	A few weeks ago, I started a survey of Becton Dickinson customers, to 
see if everyone was facing the same problems with service as I was, or 
if I was on isolated case. Well, here are the results, for anyone who is 
interested.

**********************************************************************
	Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey.  I am sorry the 
results took so long to report, but in addition to compiling them, I had 
to perform my normal duties, which are to keep my instruments working, 
and we all know how easy  that is. Anyway, without further ado, I give 
you:
			
 BD SURVEY RESULTS

	There were 39 people who I sent a survey to, and 23 sent responses. 
Most of the others sent comments with their original request for a 
survey. For the most part, the survey seemed to be supported by 
everyone; no none came out and said it was a dumb idea, although a 
couple of people didn't think it would help. 
	My intention was to see if there was a common thread that BD customers 
faced.  The thread that I found was that people are generally 
unsatisfied with BD service. I could be accused of speaking from a bias, 
because the service I have received has been just terrible. I have to 
trust that you will believe me when I say I am just reporting what 
people have told me. 
	I have sorted through a mountain of data, and truthfully, most of it 
would be meaningless to you.. Here are some stats, though. Of the 
returned surveys,  12 came from research institutes, 4 from straight 
clinical, 5 from clinical/research and 2 from biotechnical companies. I 
received comments from 2 of BD's competitors and many comments from BD 
themselves. I have to say that they have supported my effort, and have 
shown interest in the results. 
	The variety of labs, systems, and operations really makes correlating 
the data I received useless. I received surveys from 250 bed community 
hospitals to 1000+ teaching hospitals. Obviously their systems are going 
to be different. Not only were the labs different, but the responses 
came from all over the world: France, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, 
Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada and of course, America.
	What I am going to do, is to write what different people have said. I 
will include both positive and negative comments, however there are more 
negative comments than positive. Of the 23 returned 15 of them were 
negative, 2 of them were positive and  6 were middle of the road.  That 
says something to me, even with this small representative slice of the 
flow community. Here are the comments of your peers:

TD has 2 Scans, and a Star+. His instruments are heavily used and have 
dedicated operators. Tech support "abysmal" for the Star+. His Field 
Service Engineer (FSE) repeatedly told him that there was nothing wrong 
with the instrument when there was. Quote, "BD's arrogance in dealing 
with their customers is a major problem. They know all about these 
problems and they don't do enough to rectify them."

AC has a Scan and a Star+. The Scan is used for 50-200 runs/day, while 
the Star+ is used 2x/wk. There is one dedicated user for the Star+. She 
reports contradicting recommendations from BD on proper maintenance. As 
a result, she had experienced repeated failure of the fluidics. "BD 
service not regarded as optimal or even good." She also says that the 
service contracts are too expensive. 

JM has an underutilized Vantage. It has been used for 5 or 6 sorts in 
the last 3 years, however she fires it up weekly to run beads through 
it. She purchased the Mac upgrade, and so far has gone through 3 
interface boards, and has had to reinstall the software twice. Her 
computer locks up during acquisition, the sample mixing assembly has had 
to be replaced and the door to the video has had to be reseated. 
Additionally, the ADCU motor has had to be replaced. She states she 
receives poor phone support after hours, and as an example of poor QC, 
her Vantage was shipped with two Y control knobs. 

 I agree with the poor QC. We just installed the ACDU hardware, and the 
pins on the plastic tray shield were installed upside down. A minor 
problem, but one that should have been caught before shipment.

ET has a Scan which is used 8-10 hours/wk. She has had no problem with 
the Scan itself. She has recently bought the Mac upgrade, but was 
reluctant to, because of the "unbelievable" markup on the prices. I 
think she may have thought of purchasing the Mac system separately, for 
she says that BD told her that she would have a tough time getting help 
for any software problems if the systems weren't a BD system. 
Nevertheless, she has had to replace the monitor twice, the CPU once and 
the printer once. She also discovered that all the replaced components 
were rebuilt ones, not new ones. She is considering going to Cytomation 
for a sorter. 

Cytomation popped up more than a few times as an alternative to BD...BD  
are you hearing this?

PE has a FACSort which is used 1-3 hr/wk. In her experience, CellQuest 
doesn't keep plot settings. "Annotated text, such as patient ID would 
disappear until I clicked in the spot where I knew it was supposed to 
be." Twice the software stopped showing events and she was told that the 
cable had pulled out of the cytometer. She has had problems with her 
printer twice (She has had the system since March.)

 I have been told that too. The weight of the cable causes it to pull 
out from the cytometer. ...Well, BD come up with a solution.

MH says he gets immediate feedback from any problems he comes across. He 
is an established beta test site for BD

JN has 2 Scans, and a Vantage which is not in service. She has praises 
for BD. When her system crashed due to a power supply failure, BD sent a 
FSE from Sydney to New Zealand to fix the problem in less than 24 hours.  
"All stops were pulled by BD to get us up and going again, which 
included someone who had just returned to Australia coming straight back 
and working on a Saturday."   (Her instruments are clinical and they 
have transplant patients which needed CD34 analysis) "We feel that we 
made the right decision about buying a FACScan."

MK has a Calibur and a new Vantage. Since installation of the Vantage, 
her FSE has been out three times to service the instrument, once to 
replace the SEM, once to fix the video door (everytime it was opened, it 
would reset the instrument settings- in the middle of a sort) and once 
to fix the alpha lock. The FSE is also scheduled to return to adjust the 
voltages going to the deflection plates. She reports that it takes her 
FSE only about 30 minutes to perform the biannual PM. He is either super 
fast, or all of the other FSE's are super slow.

MT has one Scan. She purchased the Power PC to upgrade her system from a 
Quadra. Since the upgrade, FACSComp hasn't been running right. Her 
instrument wouldn't switch from lin to log, causing all sorts of 
troubles. (I have been told by BD that this problem was supposed to be 
remedied with the FACSComp 4.0 version)   Other problems she has faced 
are that CellQuest wont save dot plots if quadrant markers are changed. 
The very annoying Mac error11  occurred when trying to print less than 
10 pages, resulting in a lost acquisition file. Her FSE has replaced the 
E-prom,  has reconfigured the instrument back to its original specs and 
has replaced the Power PC's CPU, but all of this has failed to solve the 
problems. Eventually, she ended up returning to the Quadra, and as of 
the time she returned the survey, BD has been unable to repair her 
system.

MB has a Scan and a FACSort, and had a wonderful FSE, but "When BD 
develops new software, they need to get significant input from users in 
the field. We do things out here that folks at BD must never do. I have 
seen good things in software eliminated or buried. When we asked why the 
change was made, the answer from BD was 'that feature was never used'. 
In addition, I am tired of paying good money for a software package and 
essentially end up being a beta test site."

GA has a Star+, a Scan and a Calibur which are used daily. The only 
problems she has faced are normal maintenance problems.

MB has a Vantage and says that he cannot get his laser aligned, and that 
BD has been unable to help him over the phone. He does not have a 
service contract. 

SM has an older model Vantage and Scan, both with their original lasers. 
He has ideal working conditions for his instruments, including "more 
than adequate" room AC and a sophisticated micro-processor controlled, 
in-house chilled water system. His Scan is directly vented to an AC unit 
so cool air is blown directly into it, while warm air is returned 
through the AC unit to cool it. The room is kept at 68F, and 55% 
humidity. Also, the room is basically dust free. (wow)  "BD instruments 
have performed flawlessly since installation. We have not experienced a 
clog during sorting in over 15 months (WOW!)  No problems with Mac or HP 
computers. Extremely satisfied in the reliability of the BDIS system."

DD has a Scan, Calibur, Star+ and a Vantage. The cytometers are used 
about 10 hours daily while the sorters are used once/day. He states that 
his CellQuest upgrade took four months longer than promised. He has 
experienced the well documented communications problems and unexplained 
crashes in CloneCyt. 

JC, RC and DY all claim to have no major problems with BD.

LG says he goes through about 2 air cooled lasers a year on his 
instrument. His FSE keeps a laser in his office, to insure 24 hour 
service. In spite of that, he gives BD a good report. 

TCB has a FACSort which is used about 20 hours/week. He experiences 
communications problems between cytometer and computer, but everything 
his FSE has done has failed.

This one is my favorite:

CS has 2 Scans. She works in a hospital, so her Scans are clinical 
instruments. She reports this: "We get very good response time on the 
phone. If the problem can be handled over the phone, we generally get 
good service. Only a few recent problems with new and inexperienced 
reps...We finally found an outstanding BD service technician with years 
of experience. He found a problems with our laser alignment that was 
evident from PM printouts ON THE DAY INSTALLATION three years ago. The 
installation was adequate (!) for immunophenotyping, but not accurate 
for DNA. We are clinical flow techs, not instrument specs experts and we 
rely on our service reps to advise us about instrument problems...We 
figure thousands of dollars we paid for service should at least insure 
sending someone who knows enough to fix a problem or at least cover it 
up. Yet the problem with the laser was passed over during every PM 
performed until our current rep located the error." 

 Here is my answers to the survey

 I have two Scans, both of with are workhorses. You can beat the Scan 
and they still work. They are better than Timex. Our Calibur, on the 
other hand, is another story. We have had this machine since March. It 
was manufactured in December 1996. Since installation, we have has to 
replace a PMT socket, the 3-way sort valve, and the red diode 
laser...TWICE IN 1 MONTH. This is the third laser for this instrument.  
Our FSE installed this last laser just this week, but our instrument was 
down a full week before. I called the problem in on Friday at 1100 am. 
We couldn't fix it over the phone, so I expected a visit on Monday. We 
didn't get that visit until late Tuesday. Because of the UPS strike, the 
FSE had to drive himself to get the laser, and didn't return until 
Thursday.  (I am not laying any of this at his feet; we have an 
excellent FSE.)  We have also had problems with our Star+, which 
resulted in numerous phone calls and two visits from FSE. We finally 
discovered the true cause of the problem on the day of an important, 
you-only-get-one-shot-at-this, sort. The fix was easy, luckily we had 
the part, but no one caught it until it was too late. We were just told 
our instrument had a clog.  To give credit, one FSE did a good job, and 
found another problem that added to the overall situation. 

	Well, this about raps it up. There are a couple of common threads I 
see, one of them being BD service. People are tired of spending 
thousands of dollars on service contracts to receive second rate 
service.  BD needs to listen more to their customers. Quality assurance 
is another big concern. 
	One other note:  these comments should be taken with a grain of salt. I 
cannot guarentee that what people said happened really happened as they 
said. What I mean is that I don't know the whole story in any of these 
cases. I don't mean to imply that people gave false reports, because I 
don't believe anyone did, but sometimes things aren't as bad as they 
seem. Keep in mind, we are only getting one side of the story. I have 
given BD a copy of this report, and they have explained some of these 
incidences, and questioned others. They haven't however, tried to 
explain all of them.  I think they recognize that they truly have 
dropped the ball in the majority of these cases. 
	So, what now? This survey will be for nothing, if nothing comes out of 
it. I would really appreciate your comments, good or bad, especially if 
you have experienced problems like the ones I have described. One idea 
that I heard from someone in BD, and an idea I like more and more, is to 
establish a consumers group that could be a liaison between BD and the 
flow community. The group could tell BD what people are thinking, and 
the community what BD is doing about it. Any comments on this? Again, 
thanks for all who participated and supported this effort. 
							Best Regards, 
							Bill Nostrom	
							
send comments to me at 
slickwilli@hotmail.com
518-891-3080ex62


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