Re: Informix Tech Support?

Ray Garrison wrote: > > In article <6fu6ol$d28$1@news.xmission.com>, > "John S. Michael" <john.michael@flyingj.com> wrote: > > >Roger Tomas wrote in message <352291C9.D4DD7C06@agcs.com>... [SNIP] > >My company has basically given up on getting any support from Informix. > This is a discussion thread I have wanted to see for quite some time. > My company has been using Informix since 1990, for the most part the [SNIP] > I have _NEVER_ received _ANY_ exceptional assistance from Informix > Tech Support in the 8 years I've used them, and on a scale of 1 to 10 > I would say they average about 2. That scale, by the way, has WRQ > at about a 9 and CheckFree at a 5, just for comparison. > I currently am waiting for an answer as to why I always get the > message "unknown error message 874" every time I try to set > pdqpriority. Error message text points at the optimizer, and > says to note conditions and call tech support. Fine. Conditions > are no one else is logged onto the damn host, I'm the only user, > I'm sitting in the ISQL window, no jobs/queries are running, and > I type set pdqpriority high. Or 100. Or low. Or whatever. Same > error message. Tech support asks me to fax them my onconfig, a > printout of onstat -a (which is huge), mayby try running oncheck > against each table and index (!!!) as "it might help", etc. > > Look, I don't expect people to have an instant answer to a problem > when I call, but I do expect to talk to someone who has a clue. For > what I pay every year (and if I could convince the board that we > shouldn't be paying we wouldn't be, but they keep hearing that you > have to budget 15% for "software support", so we keep on spending...) > Anybody have better luck than we have? Yes I do. Being a Regency Support customer may help some but mostly it has to do with knowing how the game is played. If you do not get immediate help ask the tech to escalate the case to priority level 2 (default is level 3). Support priority level 2 means that a manager begins tracking case progress and the tech is encouraged to pass the case to another higher level tech. If the case is business critical you could have it marked priority level 1 (which needs to be negotiated with the tech and/or his/her manager because:) here the tech on the case can't go home until your problem is at least alleviated. In any case you can always speak to a manager to get the case moved to a more experienced tech. Please remember patience, we all had to learn what we know. Techs who have driven me crazy by their lack of knowledge when they first started are amoung my favorite support people today because they have learned so much. Art S. Kagel