VERY disappointed with Orion support

I would agree that I have had more of these encounters with support as well; often I find I know more about the product than the person supporting me.  I have also found that if I call during certain times of the day I am more likely to get better support than others.  On the flip side, I have found that if I insist on having my issue escalated because it's clear the person working it doesn't have a clue I normally get better support.  I also find that phone calls have better results than just sending in an email/ticket.

If I were to guess I would say that this is all likely due to SolarWinds expanding it's product line and therefore having divide up the product support teams as well as add additional people.

Even with a few of these recent incidents SolarWinds support is still much better than many of our other vendors.

My favorite is when we submit a trouble ticket, after doing as much leg-work as we can do and looking through thwack and other resources, then getting a response from the tech support person referencing a link to a post on thwack.  A post that we had already searched, found, and read, yet provides no actual help, just random info.  If that had worked for us, we would not have had to submit a ticket.  Thwack should NEVER be the answer given from support.  If the tech support person wants to use thwack as a resource that is perfectly fine with me.  But we do not pay for a support person to tell us to read something posted by some random person that is not employed by the company we pay.

My second favorite is when we needed to have a fairly specific function work properly (as it should), we were given a copy-paste block of html code and told we would have to build a page that did what we wanted because it was not working as it should...

Oh well, it only takes a customer a time or two before they figure out a better way to do what they need without support... which quickly leads to without that company...

All,

Apologies for the negative experiences on the support side. I've asked our support management team to reach out so we can figure out what we need to do to improve in the future. Please let me know if there are any questions or concerns in the interim.

Regards,

Rob

crzyr3d wrote: Very frustrated with support these days.  I remember, just a few years ago, when support was knowledgeable individuals who would immediately assist and resolve the issue.  Now it's more like a bunch of tech's or wanna be tech's that seem to have no idea what they are doing.  I feel the support is pulling at straws now on what to do to try to fix and the timely manner of assisting the fix is much to be desired.  Maybe SolarWinds is getting to big to fast to handle their products with experienced/knowledgeable personnel?  I really am questioning that now.

I cant agree more with all of these comments. I am assuming one of the causes is that SW takes over a company and asks their techs to support it. Even though the techs have very little understanding on how the products work.

The reason I say this is support for NPM and SAM is ussually top notch but support for Web Helpdesk, Virtualization Manager, and Storage Manager are all subpar.

Tech Support using thwack is also fine with me, I am sure we all have to resort to google searches now and then to help us out

We usually have awesome support.  Our support issues are usually after hours when you get the over seas support.  The last couple of those techs we talked to did not even seem like they new the products (NPM and SAM) or it seemed like they were using a flip chart and cue cards.

One person in particular was so off base, one of my co workers just refused to humor him any more and began to systematically explain to him to not try to bull shoot technical people.  After the third incorrect rabbit trail, we hung and said we would figure it out ourselves and shortly after resolved the issue.  When the person called back to follow up and we told them that we had resolved it on our own, he said great and would close the ticket.  He did not even ask what the resolution was.

With all that said, the day time support is awesome and we have a couple of SW techs that we just ask for by name...Cause they are awesome.  We just hope and pray if we have a production issue that state side support is available, because I should not know more about the product than the support team in a production emergency.

So yeah CST support,  boo after hours.

And yeah for the THWACK community that solves most of my problems anyway.

And yeah for who I assume is a SW employee who rocks this board with solutions.

Thanks again to all who have responded with your feedback.  I want to apologize on behalf of SW to those who have experienced unfavorable support interactions.  Being a great support organization is not selective; it’s a full time job.  Rest assured we will work hard to close down any gaps in the quality of service we are providing.  We would like to encourage all of our customers to continue to provide any and all feedback directly to TechnicalSupportFeedback@solarwinds.com.  This is a direct path to provide either
positive or development feedback monitored by a team of global support managers. 

Sincerely,  

David Cox

Director, Americas Customer Support

I see what your saying but....  I call about my LEM product every so often and I know when a call comes in from Idaho, I'll get an answer, Brian, Ann and Nicole are terrific. 

But like bsciencefiction.tv says, after hours support for the other 10 products I have it VERY hit or miss.  Plus I agree the people in Austin all seem to be at a higher level....

Without I would be fired....   :-)

I would agree, the LEM team is super awesome!

Sent from my iPhone

Hehe... I wouldn't go that far but aLTeReGo does deserve some props... he's the SAM man 4 sure.