It took two months for support to even acknowledge @LaDev’s ticket and now you’re asking him to clean up their mess by documenting the fix? Maybe focus on getting support to improve response times instead of relying on users to backfill the gaps in the support system. Sounds like something an “advocate” may try to accomplish at least.
7 Likes
We don’t even know if the “fix” was fixing a configuration setting or an actual bug. We have no context but I’m guessing the “I opened a ticket but fixed it 2 hours later” is a configuration issue. So without context of the actual issue and fix, we have no idea if it was a PEBCAK or bug issue.
2 Likes
That’s not the point at all. “Shoot the messenger” is why I entirely stopped submitting bug reports; every time I felt like I was on trial and had to prove beyond a doubt that there was a bug. I don’t get paid for that.
Support is awful and getting worse. Meager attempts to shine a better light on the turd that it is are pointless and, frankly, insulting to me.
There are apparently a bunch of execs pulling down big salaries here, so there’s no excuse for support to be so terribly bad.
3 Likes
Well I was replying to the “clean up their mess” comment. However, I can be more direct.
Support taking two months to reply back to @LaDev is horrible. The fact they replied back with “looking in to it” is also bad. It means not only did they take two months to even look at the ticket, they ignored any updates provided by @LaDev in the ticket. Again, this is bad. It is even further exacerbated by @penguinpbx response to @LaDev’s post about their experience.
Not one single apology. No admission of fault on Sangoma’s side nor an attempt to even smooth the situation over. The whole “make a new thread telling us what you did” is just lazy because no one actually found out what the problem really was.
Now as for this, well it is something that is going to happen in other projects too. Just submitting a report saying “this must be a bug” means anyone handling that report needs to really find out if it is a bug. I’ve found numerous times when someone claimed something was a bug and after pushing for more information, debugs and such it turns out it wasn’t a bug at all but the person doing something wrong or missing something. There are also situations where the bug will only be present if certain conditions are met and replicating said bug can be very much a PITA while trying to make those conditions happen while replicating. So this process can be painstaking, could require a lot of back and forth between the submitter and the support team/person handling the issue.
That being said, when the support team lacks proper skillsets such as diagnostics and problem solving compounded with a lack of the needed knowledge, in this case things like; networking, Linux, SIP and Asterisk (among others) it makes the most simple things that should take very little time to diagnose and resolve turn into a massive undertaking that generally ends up not only frustrating the reporter/submitter but also not having a desired resolution (if any).
A conversation was started about all of this highlighting these points three months ago. Instead of actually having that conversation we’ve been buried in noise of people making new threads (like this one) repeating the talking points of the original conversation that was being started. This is on top of the noise being created by people who rarely say a word in the community but are now chiming with their #MeToo support stories. It’s all noise and distractions from having the real conversation.
Bottom line is the current support offered by Sangoma is abysmal and yes, ineffectual. This is why I have been extending offers, like the one I gave you, to people to help resolve their issues with none of this finger pointing, pass the buck BS that is happening with Sangoma support or other representatives.
2 Likes
I hope that someone can tell me authoritatively that I am wrong about this but I believe the “support team” for open source is the dev/engineering team. Whoever receives tickets just throws all open source-related tickets to Kapil’s team. If I am counting correctly all the folks who were on open source (PBXact/FreePBX) support are now gone from Sangoma.
So yeah, when you don’t have tier-1 or -2 people who know a product you’re going to get very delayed support, at best.
3 Likes
I am not sure how to say this without somebody taking offense and probably banning me for the next 2 years or permanently. Overall, there is a distinct lack of internal knowledge. You can see that based on replies from the person whose job it is to be the face of the project. They don’t know how to do things that literally hundreds of people have been trained to do through the official training back in the day. I would think if you want your customers to be certified, you should probably have your employees at the same knowledge level. It is also my understanding based on the original job posting that the face of the project is pulling down six figures to do all that’s being done here.
4 Likes
I would also like to point out that I have a lot of respect for @kgupta I have worked with him for years. I think he is in a bad spot and at no fault of his own
6 Likes
Sangoma’s paid professional support for both open and closed source products is provided by a team of individuals working across the globe 24x7 in accordance with the terms of multiple separately negotiated Service Level Agreements, support packages, etc. Additionally, many of these fine folks share their thoughts and expertise on various community forums from time to time as time allows. You can see them on the FreePBX Community Forums by looking for the Sangoma logo flair on their user profile image.
1 Like
I agree; that was no shade on Kapil. It is to say when you have engineers doing engineering and product support then their time is divided and priorities have to be set.
3 Likes
OK, thanks for your reply. Do you have any thoughts then on why we keep seeing complaints that support is so dismal?
2 Likes
Not sure how a “look” at a ticket is tracked, but, usually, one may “look” at a ticket, multiple times, without anything much beyond a page view being logged. And, if the user reports they resolved the issue themselves, as was the case here with @LaDev, then reasonable persons might disagree on the next steps… keep it open ? close it out ? ask for more info right away ? wait a month or two and if no new info then let another team handle it ? etc. ? (And these are superficially valid questions to be considered without knowing all the other details of the ticket…)
1 Like
So it is the customer’s fault. Got it… The solution here has been obvious all along. Be a better customer
2 Likes
For anyone interested in seeing when the Sangoma employees have participated in the forums: sangoma - FreePBX Community Forums
2 Likes
the community.freepbx.org forums
Well, the topic is FreePBX/PBXact here. What other forums should we be aware of where folks can get community support including from Sangoma staff?
3 Likes
Another history and dynamics lesson for those unaware of the communities mentioned.
While FreePBX uses asterisk it is a whole different beast and the communities have always been kept separate for good reasons. Many FreePBX users don’t even know what asterisk is. With the exception of Josh the Asterisk devs etc mostly don’t come here, and when a FreePBX person gets lost they are sent here. You will note Josh usually only speaks up to things within his wheelhouse such as some sort of question related to an Asterisk configuration or log. I would not encourage FreePBX users to go to that forum or any mailing list for Asterisk. Those platforms should be reserved for Asterisk issues only.
3 Likes
It’s a good day when he throws down a Colp Hard Fact 
5 Likes
A reasonable person might expect support to acknowledge not only their new comment on an active ticket but that a resolution was found and support was no longer needed. As part of that acknowledgement a reasonable person might expect follow ups like “What was the resolution you found?” and perhaps even “We will keep this ticket open for another 48 hours just in case the issue happens again.”
I’m not sure what type of SLA allows for support to leave a ticket open or in a state of “Customer Replied” without any action on it for two months. Because if this was really honouring an SLA, the customer would be due credits for severe violation of the SLA.
The fact that the support agent opened this ticket, picked up a phone and called the user to say “Hey, we’re looking into this” means the support agent didn’t even do a proper review of the ticket. The support agent didn’t even seem to know the issue had been resolved two months prior.
The fact you’re not seeing immediate issues with how this entire situation was handled and are asking these types of questions highlights that your experience in customer tech support of this type is limited.
3 Likes
The support services agreement from 2021 seems to imply your worse case scenario is 3 business days. They may have released a superseding agreement that changed this to 1460 hours. Perhaps someone could post that document if it exists.
1 Like