Re: Terrible Technical Support

In article: <3vo0et$sav_at_jalisco.optimum.net> tim_boemker_at_zacatecas.optimum.com (Tim Boemker) writes:
> Are you suggesting that Bronze customers don't deserve better? I
> heartily disagree. And Oracle won't sell Gold to smaller accounts.

No, I think that 'deserving' doesn't come into it at all. As I said before, you pay your money, you take your choice.

I know for a fact that most companies are clueless about the 'real' cost of running a database like Oracle...i.e. hiring the best 'in-house' people they can afford, including a full-time experienced DBA (not just some programmer/graduate wannabee), and buying the support level that befits the criticalness of their data.

I've seen (in my 12+ years as an Oracle freelancer) many companies that skimp on both of these and then run into problems, then they start whinging about it in places like this.

And I don't see this case as any different.

As my learned Australian colleague (Gordon Hooker) said, if Oracle are busy dealing with customers who decided that their data is important and have paid for more than the bogo standard support, then everyone else will have to wait, rightly so.

So many companies reach for the phone at the first sign of an error, when they could so easily not have to if they had someone experienced in-house to deal with it (or maybe even to prevent it happening in the first place)

Oracle _isn't_ a simple piece of 'point and click' software,it's a highly complex, higly configurable RDBMS and as such it should be treated with the respect it deserves, IMHO.

YMMV.

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