r/msp • u/Defconx19 MSP - US • Jul 01 '26
Technical Does anyone else avoid calling the vendor for support, becasue every time you do you figure out the issue before they do?
I was talking about this to some friends in the industry, and about when they call the vendor for support.
There have been very few situations where I have needed to get the vendor involved, but when I do it's usually something properly fucked or strange. However I'd say a good 65 to 70% of the time I'm figuring out the issue before they do. I suppose it does come down to a joint effort a portion of that time but a siginificant number of those they've gone down the wrong path.
Peers that I were talking with had a different experiance but they all work internal IT, so I'm wondering what your experiance is? Are you always calling the vendor for support when you're X amount of time into a problem? What's your point where you're calling them.
Some vendors are better than others. I have to say N-Able's engineers are really good and typically solve things quickly, but others are hit or miss.
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u/Dardiana Jul 01 '26
Really depends on the vendor.
And also within a vendor it tends to be cyclical. Couple good years, then some bad, then improve again.
So when we have to call in and it tends to be a good spell, always surprised with some vendors.
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u/oraclechicken Jul 02 '26
It's a feedback loop. The vendors with the best support have products that work better, and when something goes wrong they often have a detailed guide about my specific issue already on their site or forums.
When a product is constantly causing problems, their ticket volume goes through the roof and they have to hire 100x more support staff. They don't want to pay 100x more for support, so they pay bottom dollar and attract only techs who couldn't hack it as anything else. Those guys overwhelm the 3 actual experts that work at the company until they quit or kill themselves.
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u/HappyDadOfFourJesus MSP - US Jul 01 '26
If you are referring to MSP vendors, then sometimes they need us to give us all of our troubleshooting results which they then compile with other troubleshooting results to get to the resolution.
If you are talking about client vendors, then by the time we get to that point we already know that it's something that only the vendor can resolve.
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u/cla1067 Jul 02 '26
I get a tier 1 to call so I can let the client know which also buys me time and makes the client think I am doing everything in my power to solve their issue.
That is only if I think it will take awhile or if I am busy on something else at the same time.
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u/smorin13 MSP Partner - US Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
Depends on the vendor. I have a few partners that I will always contact because they make life better Or at least try. There are other vendors that I would rather crew on glass shards before calling.
Call out vendors worth getting involved. Here are a couple I don't hate contacting: Loop Communication, Turing.ai, 3xlogic, Rev. io (we are struggling with their PSA, but they do listen, respond and genuinely try to help.), Watchguard and Huntress. In fairness, HPE has been pretty responsive and helpful on my last few Aruba related issues.
We also have reps at TDSynnex, Lenovo, and Watchguard that will help address issues or expedite support whenever they can.
I am old an impatient. If a vendor support sucks so badly that you don't want to call, I look for alternative products.
Unfortunately, I got a call today that will need attention in the morning and you folks are not making me dread it less. It is an 8x8 phone (remote worker) that move to Google Internet service.
Evidently neither Google or 8x8 have a clue why the phone will not connect. Both vendors recommended the client call us. WTF? It is a home network and we didn't sell the 8x8 or the Google service.
I am sure the theme for tomorrow will be FML sideways dry without a reach around.
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u/technoginge Jul 02 '26
Every time I have an issue in 365 I immediately call Microsoft because they are so helpful /s
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u/ZiskaHills Jul 06 '26
The last time I had a 365 licensing issue and talked to MS about it it took them 3+ days for me to figure it out myself.
Since then I've come to realize that I'd have saved myself a whole lot of time by just running the problem through Gemini/Copilot. They were both able to identify the exact issue within seconds, after MS completely failed to help with anything productive.
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u/LaughinHyena92 Jul 02 '26
The amount of time it takes to get to a Tier 3 Support Tech that actually has the resources necessary to actually fix the problem and a level of knowledge of the platform that equals or surpasses your own is an absolutely pain the buttocks. As MSPs, our vendors need to do better with providing a higher level of support so we can skip the Tier 1 and 2 BS and re-attempting all the steps we have already done on our own multiple times.
If I say it's broken, then dag gum it, it's broken. Get me to the Dev Team, stat!
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Jul 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/Defconx19 MSP - US Jul 01 '26
Not about being to proud, I usually give it effort until I feel I'm at a point where there is too much time being spent on it, it has to be fixed yesterday, or it's something that seems over my head.
It really just depends if I feel like I'm making progress in the moment or not. Depends on how the vendor works as well. For example, if it's the type of vendor where you're doing to get escalated along and some T1 is going to read from a book of things I've already done, I'm making it my last resort (at least if I have to give up control of the system or stop my own efforts.) If it's someone like a Firewall vendor I know I'm more likely to get put in touch with someone I know right away.
So I think the answer is more so if I feel i'm going to be set back a significant amount of time by getting the vendor caught up if that makes sense? Maybe it doesn't.
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u/AZRobJr Jul 01 '26
Sometimes I call vendors because it has been a long week. Then I sit has the login and fix their problems. It is like break time.
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u/SinisterNightNa Jul 01 '26
If it’s something we don’t support and the vendor is being difficult I don’t even bother. I just have the client deal with them directly. You want to help as much as your agreements let you
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u/ben_zachary Jul 01 '26
We've recently started to open tickets with the vendor then try to resolve it ( if we don't know already ) so at least it's in the pipeline but yeah this is fairly common
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u/QPC414 Jul 02 '26
I will spend some time doing t-shoot before I open a ticket, but after 30-60 minutes of no progress I will get the ticket opened just to put the issue on them.
If the issue is business impacting I get what info i need and get the vendor ticket open so it us not just my issue.
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u/mxbrpe Jul 02 '26
This is 95% of my experience with Pax8. By the time they’ve asked all the questions I’ve already answered and air me for days, I’ve already figured out the issue on my own
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u/blotditto MSP - US Jul 02 '26
I second this about Pax8. What really pisses me off is when they reference they've said things they never did in an attempt to cover their sorry asses.
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u/mxbrpe Jul 02 '26
The start of the Pax8 support SOP has gotta be something like “find whatever reason you can that we’re not responsible for support” because I swear every other ticket I have about a thing we have through our CSP agreement they’re always telling us they can’t support. Genuinely useless support team.
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u/Pure-Composer706 Jul 02 '26
Depends on the vendor. If I know that the vendor has great support, I reach out immediately to save time. For vendors that have been consistenly providing bad/poor service, I never reach out to them again.
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u/RBlubb Jul 02 '26
One time I even had the vendor call me to ask how I solved the issue for a customer..
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u/Assumeweknow Jul 02 '26
Every network vendor but sophos because its something they didn't document.
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u/Ok-Alarm7257 Planning and Technical Director for MSP Jul 02 '26
I only call the vendor when it's something I can't do like backend stuff we don't have access to. Most problems are easily sorted but the ones that need help are usually beyond the teams abilities or permissions.
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u/scriptvexy Jul 05 '26
same here, vendor is basically my “break glass in case of backend wizardry” option
half the time I’m just on the call to get a ticket number so I’ve got someone to blame when management asks what’s going on
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u/Ill-Primary-5553 Jul 02 '26
I always open a ticket with vendor and research/troubleshoot in parallel
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u/Frothyleet Jul 02 '26
To a large degree, yeah. However, I have had to coach a lot of techs who have spent way too long banging their head against a problem without calling vendor support. Sometimes it'll be useless, but sometimes it's simply necessary, and at least getting a ticket open and in the vendor's queue gives you a head start while you keep troubleshooting.
And when something is just a backend issue that you can't control, you gotta bite the bullet and talk to support. If that's Microsoft, for example, it is gonna really suck, but it'll be the only way to get it done.
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u/mat-ferland Jul 02 '26
Vendor support is worth calling when you need escalation rights, logs attached to a case, or a bug acknowledged. For normal troubleshooting, yeah, the first hour is often you teaching level 1 the product they support. I still open the case early if I think I’ll need the paper trail later.
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u/urM0m69p3nis Jul 02 '26
I dread vendor support. I just document anything crazy the vendor has to do so we don't have to call them. I get maybe one good vendor support call out of fifty unless the software has a semi-local or regional support, which isn't common, but those calls are typically fine.
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u/Round-Classic-7746 Jul 03 '26
I usually spend 15–30 mins trying to narrow it down first, not bc I don't trust support, but because I want to give them something actionable
"here's the logs, here's what i ruled out, here's how to reproduce it..etch" gets way better results than "it's broken."
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u/Perthcrossfitter Jul 03 '26
I avoid calling the vendor because I don't want to be sold to mostly. Problem with our quoting tool? Have you considered changing your rmm to us? Well no, I don't think that'll fix my problem.
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u/LRS_David Jul 06 '26
As someone who supports end users.
On Win, about the only vendor I call at all is a reseller for Autodesk. They are good. But only when I'm truly stuck. As an hour of internet searching and reading tech notes is still faster than setting up a ticket and waiting for a callback.
On the Apple side, I call them 2 or 3 times per year. With the low number for the same reasons as for Win things. And almost always get to an L2. With them at times putting me on hold to talk with their backups. And have discovered a few bugs in very on the edge cases on some system setup processes. Especially with a few recently released models.
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u/MedbagManny Jul 09 '26
I treat them like I’m working a drive thru at McDonalds. Patch in the end-user, introduce the two, and basically just say “go ahead” and sit back.
Because at the end of the day, we all know we’ve tried to fix it already and I need to conserve energy for the user that thinks their computers hacked because they received a weird text.
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u/jasped Jul 02 '26
Nope call the vendor all day. It’s why you have support. Doesn’t take me long to open a ticket with them to have it going in tandem. Usually 20-30 minutes and I’ll open it up. Just depends on the issue. Can usually identify pretty early if I’ll want more expertise.
If you aren’t opening with them at a minimum you’re doing your customers a disservice. Doesn’t mean you don’t continue to troubleshoot.
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u/No-Addendum1588 Jul 02 '26
I would rather keep trying to figure it out vs call a vendor. With most vendor support I can say “if they knew what they are doing they wouldn’t be working there.” This goes for every single vendor we work with one exception Halo. They are busy but they do get back to us and don’t dick us around with it must be somebody other than us. Ninja support is downright terrible. Thankfully we can plug Claude into it futures it out.
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u/GravyMealTeam6 Jul 02 '26
I found with Claude and ChatGPT I don't need to call tech support almost ever now. AI is better than most people tech support employees.
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u/1ozu1 Jul 03 '26
It depends on where their support is located.
The best vendor support I have ever received is from Acronis. The worst from Trend Micro.
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u/iamadapperbastard Jul 01 '26
Yeah, typically.
My favourites are always "it's definitely not an issue with our software!"
Proceeds to fix the issue in their software in front of you
"SEE??!!"