Re: Oracle support is sub-optimal

On Jul 4, 9:48 am, "gym dot scuba dot kennedy at gmail" <kenned..._at_verizon.net> wrote:
> I used to be a big fan of Oracle support.  When I had some very sticky
> situations they came through.  Now they have so segmented it that your
> Severity 1 SR is passed around non-stop.  Actually, it is with a lot of
> stops.  Each time they pass it around it takes at least 30 minutes for the
> next engineer to ask you yet again for the log files you already uploaded.
> If that engineer goes home then the SR languishes for over an hour in some
> queue.  (until you call up and bitch)  It shouldn't take over 12 hours for a
> Sev 1 SR to be resolved.  Most of the time has been spent waiting for the
> next engineer to read the notes and ask for more or more recent logs. (for a
> down system, they don't change much)
>
> Then if it is a "different issue" they open yet another SR.  I suspect that
> technique is to make their call resolution look good. (it is a different sr
> at that point)  They are shooting themselves in the foot.  Our company was
> purchased by another company with no Oracle experience and this will lead
> upper management to believe the Oracle prodcuts are "sub-optimal".
>
> Jim

I recently had an SR that threatened to do this (not sev 1, though, a pre-production system), but the second SR that was generated was handled by a fellow in Australia who, after a couple of go-arounds which made things worse, really went the extra mile to _not_ handoff the SR as issues arose that he was supposed to handoff. I really appreciated that, he sounded like he was ignoring orders to win the battle. It definitely makes a difference when someone spends years as a real dba before going into support. I can't help but wonder if the strictures involved in an escalation make it more difficult for someone competent, up to their elbows in, it to take ownership of a problem.

I also felt for the guy, he was working from home and his toddler was screaming at one point. :-O

In the end, he got the job done, and I had a good support call experience, if a bit slower than I would like, but with the proviso it seemed in spite of the procedures, rather than because of them.

Then I opened an unrelated support call with another vendor last week, and haven't heard back...

jg

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