Informix Support?

Is anyone else having a difficult time getting Support to deliver services? Over the years, I've come to expect to have to haggle and scream at the first-level support folks, just to get them to admit/recognize that I'm a support customer and that my systems are under support. By now, I don't even get bothered enough to make an issue of it. Today I got a call from one of my flagship customers, who touts my company's and Informix's products in seminars and tradeshows around the country. They're threatening to jump ship because every time they've called for support in the last year, they've had to do a goat dance to prove that they are supported. Informix seems to have one hell of a time tracking and validating their Support contracts. As my customer said, "I've called IBM for support for ten years. Each time, I just give them my customer number and I never have any trouble getting to a technical person. With Informix, I waste as much time with the accounting bullshit as I do with the technical stuff. It's just not worth it." It seems to me that the crux of the problem is Informix's poor system of managing renewals of support contracts. Anybody else with the same issues? Joe -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Lumbley(jlumbley@netcom.com) author of: "INFORMIX DBA Survival Guide" Slaving away on "INFORMIX DEBUGGERS Survival Guide", available early 1998 from Prentice Hall/Informix Press. If you have debugging tips, tools, or ideas to share, please send me some e-mail. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------