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Comment by phyzome | Hacker News Reader

« First, no phone support. Hardly acceptable when even Google has this. »

...you can reach Google over the phone?

Do people use phone support? I've never used it for anything in my life. If I was unable to make something work without phone support I would just switch to another service.

I once got on to Microsoft for some phone support, After asking me lots of questions about myself which were necessary before they could answer the specific question I'd already asked, the person on the other end finished up by saying that this was a question I needed to put instead to the vendor who had sold me the product. I can't remember if they asked if there was anything else they could help me with today.

Microsoft Support can be quite good depending upon the product you need help with.

I’ve called them for help with a Office 365 issue and they were very helpful.

I’ve called them once for an Xbox issue (I wanted to buy an Xbox 360 game and it wasn’t letting me) and the rep didn’t really have a clue. I ended up finding the answer after searching a few Xbox forums.

Actually I'd heard that office 365 support was good and in fairness the incident I was talking about was many years ago.

Oddly enough though, even the enterprise product support can be very bad. I've had dealings with Microsoft over issues related to Azure while under EA, and they still took weeks to even look at the issue, which turned out to be a problem on their end.

When it comes to big-brand software and services, it can really pay off to buy via a good reseller or consultancy, who often offer much better support than the company that actually makes the product. Of course, that's not actionable advice when we're discussing which mail provider is best for personal use. (Although I suggest the answer is still "not O365".)

Yes, if you need an immediate response. It also helps you push through "level 1" support much faster than a traditional ticketing/email system.

If the ticketing system is sane not so much. Obviusly this is always troublesome with the big players.

When you pay for Gsuite, yes you can.

The single case where I used it was a good experience (though obviously you'll find a lot of people who had issues the support couldn't resolve).

You cannot if you just have your personal @gmail.com email.

You can and it is good. Had to a couple of times the last couple of years and every single time the support was stellar. Not just did the first person on the phone know what s/he was doing, they went to lengths to verify my credentials, which is a bit of a hassle but I appreciate it since it makes me feel my accounts are "save".

Yes, I do several times a month on behalf of my clients. You can call them, chat with them, they call you back. They aren't perfect, but far from "you're on your own".

Gsuite has ways, I think.

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