RE: RE: how good is oracle tech support?

From: Thomas Day <tday6_at_csc.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 12:43:43 -0400
Message-ID: <OF39E2AA73.ADF3AD45-ON85256E6E.005AE5BB@csc.com>

This topic brings back ... memories.

Years ago I had a problem (I believe a bad upgrade from 8.0.6 to 8.1.6) and discussed contacting Oracle support. I told my manager what would happen:

My first contact would be with someone who spoke English as a second language. They would glean a few buzz words that they recognized from our conversation and pump them through a knowledge base. They would email me the resulting papers, none of which would have anything to do with the problem. This would take approximately one week.
On my second go-round I would be escalated to someone who actually understood me but who did not understand my problem. They would also send me a second set of useless papers. Probably another week.
On my third go-round I would speak to someone from the development or testing lab. They would want to duplicate my problem. They would then send me a fix that worked. Yet another week.

It worked out pretty much as I forecast except that step c) did not result in a fix. It took a special meeting with all sorts of managers and contracting officers and an Oracle VP (they're actually a dime-a-dozen) to plan a project (undertaken by Oracle) to come up with a fix. Total time was more like 3 months but we did end up with a custom patch that completely fixed our problem.

Bottom line is that Oracle support is very good if you have the clout and patience. But if you need an emergency fix yesterday then it probably isn't going to happen.

                                                                                                                                       
                      Pete Sharman                                                                                                     
                      <peter.sharman           To:      oracle-l_at_freelists.org                                                         
                      @oracle.com>             cc:      Peter Ross Sharman <PETER.SHARMAN_at_oracle.com>                                  
                      Sent by:                 Subject: RE: RE: how good is oracle tech support?                                       
                      oracle-l-bounce                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                       
                      04/06/2004 12:17                                                                                                 
                      PM                                                                                                               
                      Please respond                                                                                                   
                      to oracle-l

Of course they do. They refer you to OTN and doc as stuff YOU can see, not =
necessarily as stuff they use to resolve your issue. There are a lot of oc=
casions when the material they use to resolve your problems simply can't be=
shared, because the material covers internals that is either:

Dangerous to know - incorrect usage may cause even further problems
Not necessary for you to know - see 1, or
Provides information that competitors would LOVE to know

The very reason that material is in the doc or on OTN is to obviate you nee=
ding the detailed internal material.

They also have access to the developers themselves, and in some cases (depe=
nding on where in Support they're from) they also have access to the source=
code. That's more than I'll ever have. :(

Pete
=

"Controlling developers is like herding cats." Kevin Loney, Oracle DBA Handbook
=

"Oh no, it's not. It's much harder than that!" Bruce Pihlamae, long-term Oracle DBA

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] =
On Behalf Of ryan.gaffuri_at_cox.net
Sent: Wednesday, 7 April 2004 12:23 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Re: RE: how good is oracle tech support?

also, what does oracle support have to work with? Most of the time they see=
m to use the OTN docs and metalink. do they have any internal docs?

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Received on Tue Apr 06 2004 - 11:44:59 CDT