Microsoft Support Calls
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@Dashrender
In many cases - they handle the stress of OPENING that request with MS.. All of my direct dealings with MS have been a pain. -
oh, I consider myself lucky then. Other than waiting for a call back, the 3 calls I've ever made have all been extremely pleasant and easy - well as pleasant as any situation can be when you're opening a MS support ticket
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As @SAM says we would be happy to help you out there. Do it all the time. Let me know what you need
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@Dashrender said:
oh, I consider myself lucky then. Other than waiting for a call back, the 3 calls I've ever made have all been extremely pleasant and easy - well as pleasant as any situation can be when you're opening a MS support ticket
I'd say so. 10+ years ago, Microsoft support calls were a good experience (and cheaper). In the last 5 years or so, they've become terrible. The last one I made was nothing but a waste of time and they refunded my money; every time I gave the guy details about the issue, he would say he'd have to go talk to his manager and call me back the next day.
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@jasonh said:
I'd say so. 10+ years ago, Microsoft support calls were a good experience (and cheaper). In the last 5 years or so, they've become terrible. The last one I made was nothing but a waste of time and they refunded my money; every time I gave the guy details about the issue, he would say he'd have to go talk to his manager and call me back the next day.
Microsoft sells their software, they are not in the support business. This is a key issue with Microsoft compared to Oracle, Red Hat, Suse, Canonical, etc. All of those vendors make 100% of their money on support and so they have to have excellent support and they need to make their products work without needing support. Microsoft, on the other hand, makes their money selling software and upgrades, regardless of the availability of support. This means that the products don't need to work, support doesn't need to exist and there is no incentive for them to make things really stable. And since what support there is is an "extra" on top of the software, there is actually good incentive for things to break so that you have to pay for support. It's a horrible model. More companies need to look at how adversarial the Microsoft software models are when setting up these relationships. Buy Red Hat products, and Red Hat is your partner, in the same financial boat with you. Buy Microsoft products and they have incentives to screw you.
This is a major reason why I like Office 365. It changes that relationship and Microsoft becomes your partner. Your financial futures are aligned, not adversarial.
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Part of being a MS Cloud Essentials Partner is we have dedicated Support that we can tap for our clients. We have one point of contact for technical and purchasing support. It's awesome no talking to people in India anymore.
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@jasonh said:
@Dashrender said:
oh, I consider myself lucky then. Other than waiting for a call back, the 3 calls I've ever made have all been extremely pleasant and easy - well as pleasant as any situation can be when you're opening a MS support ticket
I'd say so. 10+ years ago, Microsoft support calls were a good experience (and cheaper). In the last 5 years or so, they've become terrible. The last one I made was nothing but a waste of time and they refunded my money; every time I gave the guy details about the issue, he would say he'd have to go talk to his manager and call me back the next day.
It's definitely not perfect, and Scott it right - MS's solution is very adversarial. A difference though - what do you have to do to get said support from Oracle, etc? Do you have to maintain a support/maintenance agreement? I'm guessing if you pay a one time fee you can't just call them up in 2 years and get 'free' support - but maybe you can - I've never had to deal with those products.
But let's talk about one that I have - Symantec for Backup Exec. You get support during the first year of purchase, but if you don't purchase maintenance/support for the second year on, you get no help from them.My last call to MS was about 3 months ago. I will admit I was pretty unhappy when I had a system down (highest level incident) and I didn't get a call back for 6 hours because it was on the night crew and someone had called in sick that night. I didn't get a call until the next shift came in because the only guy who was working the desk I needed was on a call with another client that entire time (we did trade several emails while he was on the other call). But once I had the tech on the phone (he was a native English speaker) we knocked the problem out in under an hour.
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My experiences with Oracle have been pretty shitty. I wouldn't call them excellent. I also feel they're as happy to screw you over with changes to licencing and licencing and support costs just as much as Microsoft.
My most recent experiences with Microsoft have related to InTune and it was pretty good when I finally got to talk to someone who actually knew about the product. They were Eastern European and the line was very clear and their English was perfect. But the first person I spoke to hadn't even heard of it.
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@Minion-Queen said:
Part of being a MS Cloud Essentials Partner is we have dedicated Support that we can tap for our clients. We have one point of contact for technical and purchasing support. It's awesome no talking to people in India anymore.
I've never had any problem with the Indian Microsoft employees. They have been great troubleshooters and always go above and beyond to solve our issues. Some of them do speak in broken English, but its clear and understandable.
I've had problems with almost all other companies that use Indian support. I just haven't had any with Microsoft. Those guys seem to be really proud that they work for Microsoft and take pride in their cases. At least that has been my experience on 10 or so different occasions.
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@Minion-Queen said:
As @SAM says we would be happy to help you out there. Do it all the time. Let me know what you need
I got this one resolved, but I will definitely talk to you next time
