Re: Question: Did we made a mistake in choosing Oracle?

In article <42po0i$k07_at_news.ios.com>, Roger Snowden <snowden_at_haven.ios.com> wrote:
>DBMS question mean holding for about 30 minutes or more, but usually you
>get a more qualified person. They are also pretty good about
>escalating.
>
>Most of the Oracle people are good and helpful. The language group seems
>to house the rookies.

I agree with essense of this reply but have some significant quibbles. First, with the time. Obviously, I can't speak for how long the poster has waited, but I have been using Oracle support for a full decade, and a 30 minute wait has been very much the exception rather than the rule. Like most companies, Oracle goes through growth spurts and various internal difficulties and during such periods, I've had unacceptable response times. However, I've placed about a fifty calls in the past year and never waited more than 5 minutes for some type of assistance. About 75% of the time I get a direct connection to staff who can answer the question immediately, the remainder of the time I get the "call response group" which takes some info on the question, gives me a number (TAR) to use on a return call. Our support agreement with Oracle says that we may have to wait two hours for a call-back, but in general I find that if I don't return the call myself, I can wait several days or even weeks for a call-back. On the other hand, if I do call back after the two hour wait period, I have gotten through 99% of the time.

On the couple of occasions when our production database has gone down, support has been immediate and thorough. By the way, since we are cheap, we have significantly less than "gold" level support.

All things considered, I am fairly sure that Oracle provides extremely competitive support--I certainly haven't gotten any better support elsewhere, and we deal with quite a few companies. I have been on hold to one of Oracle's competitor's for the entire time I have been on Usenet this afternoon--just passed the 35 minute mark.

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Jack F. Love
Opinions expressed are mine alone, unless you happen to agree