Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?
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My thought process is if the city I support ran into an issue, not being to resolve it would be unacceptable as far as the city is concerned. Why is it that you can open a ticket that costs you $200-$400 with Microsoft and you are expected to understand that they may not be able to resolve an issue with their own operating system?
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@DustinB3403 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
When the problem is related to issues not pertaining to the item that they are supporting.
If your SQL database is what is supported, but your server goes down. Is it their job to bring the server up for you?
So you mean when you are putting in a ticket with the wrong company for the wrong support. What about when it's the company that actually supports the product you need support with and it's related to the product?
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@wirestyle22 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
@DustinB3403 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
When the problem is related to issues not pertaining to the item that they are supporting.
If your SQL database is what is supported, but your server goes down. Is it their job to bring the server up for you?
So you mean when you are putting in a ticket with the wrong company for the wrong support
No lets say you bought support for just the SQL server (cause maybe NTG offered this). You manage and run the server locally, but you don't want NTG to touch the server outside of SQL.
Their sole job would be to ensure that SQL is operating as best it can.
But it is not their job to troubleshoot the hardware, or guest environment in any way. That is on you.
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@wirestyle22 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
My thought process is if the city I support ran into an issue, not being to resolve it would be unacceptable as far as the city is concerned. Why is it that you can open a ticket that costs you $200-$400 with Microsoft and you are expected to understand that they may not be able to resolve an issue with their own operating system?
I have never seen this happen. I have paid MS for 3 different support incidents, and they assisted me to complete solution in all cases.
The recent Exchange support case, as far as I can tell, also followed through until complete solution.
Why do you think MS would not continue to work a problem until either a) a full solution is found, or b) they discover that the problem is not in their software or c) it is a bug, at which point support can no nothing more than report it to the developers and hope the devs will put out a patch.
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@Dashrender said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
I have never seen this happen. I have paid MS for 3 different support incidents, and they assisted me to complete solution in all cases.
In our field do we not prepare for what is possible, not what is necessarily probable? Obviously offset by cost vs. benefit
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@wirestyle22 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
My thought process is if the city I support ran into an issue, not being to resolve it would be unacceptable as far as the city is concerned. Why is it that you can open a ticket that costs you $200-$400 with Microsoft and you are expected to understand that they may not be able to resolve an issue with their own operating system?
Well the very first question is... is the problem with their operating system? How have you determined that?
Second, if you wanted solid support, clearly you would not be on Windows. Windows does not have "guaranteed support" like that. There are OSes that do, Windows isn't one of them. You pay per ticket and they refund your money (or don't charge you) if you come up with an issue that they can't fix or it isn't worth it for them to fix. It's a pretty simple system. Not like $400 is even close to what it takes to fix a major issue.
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@wirestyle22 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
@Dashrender said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
I have never seen this happen. I have paid MS for 3 different support incidents, and they assisted me to complete solution in all cases.
In our field do we not prepare for what is possible, not what is necessarily probable? Obviously offset by cost vs. benefit
You can't make a blanket statement like this because it's all based upon cost v benefit. Each situation is unique and needs to be analyzed for itself.
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@wirestyle22 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
@DustinB3403 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
When the problem is related to issues not pertaining to the item that they are supporting.
If your SQL database is what is supported, but your server goes down. Is it their job to bring the server up for you?
So you mean when you are putting in a ticket with the wrong company for the wrong support. What about when it's the company that actually supports the product you need support with and it's related to the product?
Related to the product. You could say that YOU are related to the product since you support it too. What if you are late for work, are they supposed to cover for you? Your statement makes no sense. Unless they have an SLA and scope detailing that they do things that are not their product, there should be zero expectation that you can even talk to them about it.
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@Dashrender said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
@wirestyle22 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
My thought process is if the city I support ran into an issue, not being to resolve it would be unacceptable as far as the city is concerned. Why is it that you can open a ticket that costs you $200-$400 with Microsoft and you are expected to understand that they may not be able to resolve an issue with their own operating system?
I have never seen this happen. I have paid MS for 3 different support incidents, and they assisted me to complete solution in all cases.
It's common. It's a key differentiation between MS and vendors like IBM and Red Hat. They guarantee support for their products. MS just offers a limited effort sort of thing.
MS support is based around "you screwed up and we'll help you", it offers very little "the product doesn't work and we'll fix it."
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@Dashrender said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
Why do you think MS would not continue to work a problem until either a) a full solution is found, or b) they discover that the problem is not in their software or c) it is a bug, at which point support can no nothing more than report it to the developers and hope the devs will put out a patch.
Because it's pretty common to hear of them refunding money and giving up when they determine that the fix is not in their interest to provide.
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@scottalanmiller Does this ultimately end up being a matter of blame then? If you can't fix a problem that you have and your only option is to come up with a new software solution, wouldn't they ask why we are at that point? I can kind of see why everything in support is just passing the buck, although I just refuse to do that.
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@wirestyle22 said in Support - when can a vendor/support provider give up?:
@scottalanmiller Does this ultimately end up being a matter of blame then? If you can't fix a problem that you have and your only option is to come up with a new software solution, wouldn't they ask why we are at that point? I can kind of see why everything in support is just passing the buck, although I just refuse to do that.
In some cases it is about blame. In some about SLA. It's really about scope. Support of this nature is a business and one with scope limits. If you refuse to do that, you screw your employer by taking on responsibilities that it is not paid for.
