Has anyone else noticed a change in the quality of support from SolarWinds?

Yes, I agree their regular support has gone downhill a lot in the past few years.  When a case is opened , I generally spend a lot of time making and adding notes, screenshots, and logs that I think would be relevant to the case. Most of their Tier-1 techs just send generic canned requests for information that was already sent, so it seems like they haven't bothered to look at what was sent. 

Fixes - Often (not always) when they find a canned fix that vaguely resembles they symptom, they just send it, and try to let auto-close trigger without verifying the fix worked. 

Contact- I have learned that when SW sends an email etc., you need to respond quickly, by  >BOTH<  email and entering notes on the website, to thwart the auto-close process.  They don't like to call on the phone, and often email in the middle of the night.  However, if I find something that seems like it may have fixed the issue, they are suddenly happy to call quickly, to close the case.  

We are considering adding on US-based Federal Premium Support (similar to regular Premium support) , both for improved levels and to keep sensitive data in the USA, but it is a LOT of extra $, and I need to be able to justify it. Their salespeople and webinars say all sorts of wonderful things about it, but that is their job.  So far, Mato1964 made  the only review I have found about Premium/Premier support  (thanks Mato ) . Is there anyone else who has used it any version?  Does SW actually follow their published SLAs for response times, support tier levels, support locations, and escalation processes, or does the customer need to need to take extra steps to make sure these happen?    

Yes, I agree their regular support has gone downhill a lot in the past few years.  When a case is opened , I generally spend a lot of time making and adding notes, screenshots, and logs that I think would be relevant to the case. Most of their Tier-1 techs just send generic canned requests for information that was already sent, so it seems like they haven't bothered to look at what was sent. 

Fixes - Often (not always) when they find a canned fix that vaguely resembles they symptom, they just send it, and try to let auto-close trigger without verifying the fix worked. 

Contact- I have learned that when SW sends an email etc., you need to respond quickly, by  >BOTH<  email and entering notes on the website, to thwart the auto-close process.  They don't like to call on the phone, and often email in the middle of the night.  However, if I find something that seems like it may have fixed the issue, they are suddenly happy to call quickly, to close the case.  

We are considering adding on US-based Federal Premium Support (similar to regular Premium support) , both for improved levels and to keep sensitive data in the USA, but it is a LOT of extra $, and I need to be able to justify it. Their salespeople and webinars say all sorts of wonderful things about it, but that is their job.  So far, Mato1964 made  the only review I have found about Premium/Premier support  (thanks Mato ) . Is there anyone else who has used it any version?  Does SW actually follow their published SLAs for response times, support tier levels, support locations, and escalation processes, or does the customer need to need to take extra steps to make sure these happen?