Re: ORACLE TECH SUPPORT. NONEXISTENT

In article <2prg11$1n5r_at_source.asset.com>, Andrew McConnell <mcconnel_at_source.asset.com> wrote:
>Very typical, in our experience. We have had 2 or 3 TARS open with
>them for 2 months. We have called and complained but it hasn't gotten
>us anywhere. Oracle's explanation is that they have trouble keeping
>anyone in the support area for very long - they move on to bigger and
>better things. Personally, I don't care what their excuse is - my
>company pays them to help me solve my problems.

I suspect that many of us who have had good experiences with Oracle support won't bother to reply, so I will. In general, I find Oracle support to be quite good. I would say that I get through to the appropriate person and receive good advice better than 90% of the time. On some occasions, the problem will necessitate a patch and in the Bad Old Days we would have to wait for overnight delivery. Recently, however, they've been able to ftp or e-mail the scripts.

On the down side, the sheer number of platforms they attempt to support can cause considerable problems. I recall that I had a particularly irksome problem with the MS-DOS version of SQL*Forms which was finally fixed by a new release of the product. However, those of my users who were on the Macintosh product had to wait for around six months to get that port. When I complained, I was told that there were only two people in Mac development (I'm sure its much higher now), and with that level of support it would take a while to get new releases out.

Oracle also has a priority program for down production systems. I have been very pleased with the level of support I've received on the two occasions when this has happened to us.

>One other warning, the tech support people are often wrong. One time
>they had me enter commands that crashed my database (and yes, the tech
>actually said "Oops."). Try to verify whatever they tell you.

I've had a few of these as well. But in general, they've fixed any damage they'd done, so all's well...

-- 
________________________________________
Jack F. Love	| 	Opinions expressed are mine alone.
		|	(Unless you happen to agree.)