Just had the craziest experience that I've ever had with Technical Support, from a company, in my life.
I work at a publicly listed company.
Writing this was cathartic. I hope some folks might enjoy it.
> Having a heck of time getting access to (publicly listed network vendor) support over the past day.
>Finally succeeded. Opened ticket (REDACTED)
> ---------
> Our assigned SE is very reachable but I’m seeking support concerning the deployment of their supported autoscaling CFT hosted on their github.
>According to our SE, I’m using a PAYG instance which is supposed to have premium support included.
> Whatever, licensing isn't important to be right now because I'm trying to validate the approach in AWS. We also pay for professional support.
>I'd been messing with this project off-and-on for much longer than i should have at this point.
>>Got an HA-pair stood up across availability zones but that wasn't really what I wanted.
>>What I wanted was to get their deployment template for autoscaling working. I'd been seeking help on this for more than two weeks. Get directed to file ticket at support.MAJORVENDOR.com
>>>The reason I'm working on this approach so that we can attest we have *exactly* the same defense as we do on prem (I would argue the security is much better cause of the telemetry you can get in AWS; thats another discussion).
>>>Yes there are other ways we could do this but I'm trying out this one :)
> .
>Was referred on a call to their support website, to be able to file a ticket.
>Have to sign up, no problem.
>Except the email signup seemed to be broken, take a couple of hours to get an account.
>Finally get email with access to the support panel- turns out that you need to put in your serial number to be able to get access, to be able to open a ticket. Okay, put the serial they gave me.
> Splash page on entering the key- You'll hear back in two days if you get access
> > Hmm, thats not good.
> Email the SE ~ 6pm last evening, anything you can do to expedite the process?
> Get call in the morning from SE- they should get this figured out soon. ooookay.
> At this point, the email thread is 17-deep in gmail.
> As I am fully blocked on this, I venture to their website and discover a 1-888 for support.
> give that ring.
> Go through the phone tree and none of the options really match what I'm going for, and go with the operator as the menu recommends.
> Speak to her for 5 min, oh - this is a professional services contract? Rerouted to professional services- but to the receptionist. She was very kind, but not the person to assist with my questions. She rerouted me back to the support line after she talking me off the ledge :) I mean, at this point Id been trying to *_open_* a ticket for ~22 hours.
> Back through the support phone menu, again. This time I picked ‘WAF’ on the phone tree. Again, speaking with level 1 support.
> > ”I am seeking support deploying a F5-supported cloudformation template in AWS. Can you please route me to someone or a team that can assist with AWS deployments for F5?”.
> Spoke to her for ~7 min before the call dropped.
> I had been on the line for 59 min. This is the crazy part, SE is calling my cell. wtf. He is on the the line with a dude from the customer service portal support. The support for their support :rofl:
> It was like he had been able to 'stomp' on the call I had been on to support and preempt their call. Could have been just really crazy timing but I think it was too convenient to be a coincidence.
> in any case we talk, start to get my questions for input to the support ticket. SE is like, sounds like you guys have got it handled, I'm going to handoff. Click. Call disconnected.
> At this point, I'm flabbergasted.
> Text the SE- are they they going to call me back?
> | Yep, he should call back
And here I am 2 hours later, waiting for a call back
Just wanted to bring it up, as I've never had a harder time interacting with technical support, anywhere, ever. And I can get this feature in AWS by flipping a switch (on the load balancers).
We are living in interesting times.
TLDR- took me 23 hours from first contact, 20+ emails, and speaking on the phone to 6 different people at MAJOR VENDOR before I could _open_ a ticket