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Hi Andy,

Yes to service contracts from the manufacturer. No to 3rd party ("Fisher 
contracts"), especially if 'negotiated' by purchasing agents/depts who 
go have a Friday happy hour beer(s) with the "Fisher rep(s)".

While I was in Miami, very good service from Leica (SP5 and 
MP/SP5/FLIM/FCS), pretty good service from Zeiss (old LSM510 at the time 
I became manager).

Regrets - that I had not been hired several months earlier to change the 
MP/SP5/FLIM/FCS to either:
a) MP/SP5 and a TIRF microscope (the U would have benefited more from 
conventional TIRF than early day nanoscope)
or -- probably better use of the money
b) MP/SP5 and a much longer service contract up front.

For "b", let's say the two F-techniques were $250,000 and the Leica 
service contract on SP5 + MP/SP5/FLIM/FCS was $90,000 (note: very 
approximate numbers ... also, the purchase did include 1 year warranty 
and 3 years service contract). So, changing to SP5 + MP/SP5 is $250K 
less in hardware to have on contract each year, so the annual "list 
price" service contract would have been a lot lower. Let's say list 
$65,000. But we could have used that $250,000 on more years of the now 
less expensive service contract. 250 / 65 --> ~4 extra years at 'list 
price' service contract. I would have asked for an 2 more years (so: 1 
year warranty, 3 years as bought, 4 years extra, plus my 2 more = 10 
years), and hopefully my boss(es) would have overruled my suggestion and 
negotiated for three or even four extra years (=11 or 12 years).

When to drop contracts - before obsolescence, shifting users to newer, 
better -- see link in p.s. -- instruments (an iSIM for example, if there 
is a way to get the commercial product serviced efficiently and at 
reasonable cost in the US).

Not a regret (I had zero influence on the non-process), so observations 
- if the U had its act together, it could have found a way to:
1. bundle all the Leica service contracts (3 SP5's and the MP/SP5, I'll 
ignore the f-techniques) onto one negotiation. The various 
depts/institutes could still have ended up forking over the money for 
their hardware.
2. the medical school Dean (in conjunctions with other Dean's, followed 
through by appropriate milliDeans, microDean's and nanoDean's) could 
have induced some discipline in various schools/depts/institutes 
spending on hardware so instead of 18 (might have peaked around 20 ... 
one being an $800,000 Opera [bonus: $80,000 per year service contract] 
that to the best of my knowledge was never used in a real screen - if 
anyone at the U did so, I hope they send me the pdf or at least a pubmed 
link) confocal microscopes, there could have been a lot fewer confocals 
(maybe 4 at the med school, 1 at Coral Gables, and a nice research 
microscope at the Marine school), with trained technical staff at each, 
whose primary jobs would be (i) operator for users who needed an 
operator, (ii) oversight for 'power users' after such had been trained 
up (and with more training ongoing), and (iii) operate/train/oversight 
for other instruments in/near each confocal (ex. research stereo 
microscopes, now tools like light sheet scopes). I strongly believe that 
5 well, heavily used, confocals would have been resulted in more more 
and better discoveries.

//

My biggest contribution to microscopy at the U was when I urged one of 
the MP/SP5 users who did 'islets in the eye' confocal imaging (and did 
so with modest number of channels and pixel count, whatever size 
Z-series), to try using the Leica SP5 resonant scanner instead of the 
default 'standard' (aka slow) scanner. That user waved me off. Several 
days later I asked the faculty member in charge of that project about 
RS. The faculty member replied that the acquisitions were now so fast 
that the user did not have the opportunity to take breaks during the 
Z-series. They now have 10 papers together.  The faculty member was - an 
is - an assistant professor at the U. The user is now an assistant 
professor at the U.

George
p.s. "newer, better" reminded me of this article,
D. Ward 2012Faster, Better, Cheaper: Why Not Pick All Three? National 
Defense Magazine.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2012/April/Pages/Faster,Better,CheaperWhyNotPickAllThree.aspx

On 3/16/2016 1:11 PM, Andrew York wrote:
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
>   Hello listserv, I'm interested in your opinions regarding service
> contracts on high-end commercial microscopes in multi-user core facilities.
> What has your experience been with service contracts? Any mistakes or
> regrets? Any advice on negotiating pricing, or if/when to drop contracts?
>
>   I've read through some old posts on this topic, but I bet there's more
> useful knowledge lurking out there, and I bet I get some juicy off-list
> replies like usual.
>
> Thanks, as always.
> -Andy
>


-- 



George McNamara, Ph.D.
Single Cells Analyst, T-Cell Therapy Lab (Cooper Lab)
University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX 77054
Tattletales http://works.bepress.com/gmcnamara/42
http://works.bepress.com/gmcnamara/75
https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgemcnamara