ok, this isn't a technical question and I really don't want it to turn into a flamewar but i'm curious.. have any of you noticed what seems like a drop in the quality of service from IBM's software support?
I've always had the occasional issues.. fighting through level 1 guys... working through the "you should upgrade" generic response etc etc but lately some of my PMR's have really begun to frustrate me.
several months back I had an LDAP PMR that was open for 7+ weeks and escalated to heck and back but still took forever to resolve, it ended up generating multiple fixes to base AIX, Tivoli's Directory client/server, even OpenSSH as a result and left me wondering if i'm the only guy out there actually using AIX LDAP clients with a non Tivoli LDAP server(that *IS* RFC compliant).. the quality of support while OK when I had it, was more or less abominable in terms of response time. as the tickets were escalated to level 4 support it was all in India and they don't work North American hours(obviously) so I spent the majority of my time sitting around waiting for them to ask for the next step.. stuff that would normally happen in quick succession talking to someone on the phone and in an office investigating the problem.. even after the PMR was escalated up to some project office etc etc, I received a call from the support developer but hilariously she wasn't at an IBM site and no access to her computer.. just wanted to "check in" with me... clearly someone with a big title thought that'd make everything better... I wasn't amused.
and now, I've noticed some issues with topas CEC recordings on AIX 6.1 TL4 where the behavior has changed and i was looking for an explanation and to verify if they were supposed to have changed since it means changes to some of our performance metric tools.. granted I left it as a sev3 because it wasn't really impacting anything but I feel like i'm beginning to spin my wheels again.. the Austin guy was great in getting back to me but since it's been escalated as a possible defect back to India I feel like i'm sitting here wasting my time. I received an email from the upper level rep who apparently didn't even read the PMR details before sending me a solution to a problem I didn't have.. in fact it was so far off base I had to go back and look up the PMR details to make sure this was the same problem.
now I can't say it's all bad.. I also came across a sev1 bug in portmapper months ago where after applying a service pack my boxes began to randomly hang, from first call to working efix was about 48 hours and considering what they had to go on, i was way impressed...
I love AIX and part of that love has always been confidence in the support organization behind it. even with these hickups I'll still say that AIX's support is light years above some of the other vendors I have to deal with but i'm starting to see some bigger cracks than normal.
I've always had the occasional issues.. fighting through level 1 guys... working through the "you should upgrade" generic response etc etc but lately some of my PMR's have really begun to frustrate me.
several months back I had an LDAP PMR that was open for 7+ weeks and escalated to heck and back but still took forever to resolve, it ended up generating multiple fixes to base AIX, Tivoli's Directory client/server, even OpenSSH as a result and left me wondering if i'm the only guy out there actually using AIX LDAP clients with a non Tivoli LDAP server(that *IS* RFC compliant).. the quality of support while OK when I had it, was more or less abominable in terms of response time. as the tickets were escalated to level 4 support it was all in India and they don't work North American hours(obviously) so I spent the majority of my time sitting around waiting for them to ask for the next step.. stuff that would normally happen in quick succession talking to someone on the phone and in an office investigating the problem.. even after the PMR was escalated up to some project office etc etc, I received a call from the support developer but hilariously she wasn't at an IBM site and no access to her computer.. just wanted to "check in" with me... clearly someone with a big title thought that'd make everything better... I wasn't amused.
and now, I've noticed some issues with topas CEC recordings on AIX 6.1 TL4 where the behavior has changed and i was looking for an explanation and to verify if they were supposed to have changed since it means changes to some of our performance metric tools.. granted I left it as a sev3 because it wasn't really impacting anything but I feel like i'm beginning to spin my wheels again.. the Austin guy was great in getting back to me but since it's been escalated as a possible defect back to India I feel like i'm sitting here wasting my time. I received an email from the upper level rep who apparently didn't even read the PMR details before sending me a solution to a problem I didn't have.. in fact it was so far off base I had to go back and look up the PMR details to make sure this was the same problem.
now I can't say it's all bad.. I also came across a sev1 bug in portmapper months ago where after applying a service pack my boxes began to randomly hang, from first call to working efix was about 48 hours and considering what they had to go on, i was way impressed...
I love AIX and part of that love has always been confidence in the support organization behind it. even with these hickups I'll still say that AIX's support is light years above some of the other vendors I have to deal with but i'm starting to see some bigger cracks than normal.
