I have dealt with numerous vendors and support.  Like all vendors, who
you get on the other line makes a huge difference as to the type of
support you receive.  i.e. I actually have received better Red Hat Linux
support from HP versus directly from Red Hat.  But in that same example
I have had both good and bad experiences.  Different people have
different levels of experience and therefore you will receive different
support depening on the level of expertise you have helping you.
 
So far as support from Symantec / NetBackup, I have had some average
support and I have had top of the line, really good support. 
 
In regards to having to wait for a call back, it really depends on the
criticality of your case and the work load of the support engineers.  I
have to admit that I prefer support setup such that if you have an issue
that you can get transferred to someone immediately, and that is an
option (I believe?) with NetBackup if you have severity level 1 issue.
Most of the issues that I have that require calling support have a call
back within 2 hours and that has been acceptable.
 
So far as value for using Symantec (Veritas) for support, it also
depends on your environment.  I just checked my configuration and we
have over 853 clients of which 762 are Unique clients that are getting
backed up on a regular basis.  I would never want to support this
environment if I didn't have someone like Symantec to back me up when I
ran into issues.  
 
So far as the email and phone numbers, I have typically gotten
verification from the support person on the number and email address
that is on file to verify that it is correct.  Not sure if they don't
always verify this, but I have typically received verification.
 
Dan
 

________________________________

From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Martin,
Jonathan (Contractor)
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 10:12 AM
To: NetBackup List
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Symantec ?!Support?!


 
A while back there was a thread going about how good/bad Symantec
support is.  I recently submitted and closed my first case (after
solving the issue myself) and replied the following to their "Technical
Support Feedback" survey.  We didn't have Netbackup support here for
many years, and only bought it to upgrade to 6.0.  Considering my
initial experience I can only hope it gets better (although that so far
looks unlikely) or I've got a feeling we won't be bothering with support
in the future.
 
4. You have indicated dissatisfaction with one or more of the case
handling aspects. Please use the comment field below to provide specific
examples. 
 
Where do I start?

1 - When I call I want to talk to a competent technician right away.
Not wait 8 hours for someone to get back to me.  What's the point of
paying for 24x7 support if I'm not going to talk to someone right away?
Does my "8 hour" wait continue for 8 hours - 24 hours a day versus a 5x9
contract where I only "burn" 9 waiting hours a day?

2 - When I ask to be called back after hours at a specific number I want
to be called on that number, not my desk because I don't work at
10:00PM.

3 - How many times do I have to tell the phone screener that my
company's email address standard is not first initial, last name?!  It
took me 2 days and several calls to get it strait that my email address
was jmarti05 at intersil.com <mailto:jmarti05 at intersil.com>  NOT
jmartin05 at intersil.com <mailto:jmartin05 at intersil.com> .  I just put in
another case and the same mistake was made!

4 - We spent 2 days going back and forth via email to work on COMMON
ISSUES that had NOTHING TO DO with my problem.  Even after I had solved
my own problem, I continued sending the support guy log files and
command line outputs just to see where it would go and HE NEVER RESOLVED
IT.

Overall my first Symantec Support went poorly, and my second isn't going
much better.
 
Jonathan Martin
Systems & Security Operations
Intersil Corporation
Office (321) 724-7314
Cell: (305) 989-0510
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: 
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/pipermail/veritas-bu/attachments/20070104/7ddd5463/attachment.html