I’d like to hear your experiences with the support that is part of the Autodesk Subscription package. My own experiences have been mixed, but I’d like to hear from you rather than push any particular barrow. Have you used it? Good, bad, indifferent, all of the above? Is it timely, efficient, knowledgeable, clearly communicated?
Please add your comments!
They have come through for me a couple times, and failed a couple times. I never came out of it with the impression that they didn’t at least try.
Another avenue that has worked a few times is the CER – the phone-home error reporting dialog that comes up after a crash. I’d put in my edress and let it send the data, and a few weeks later an email from support would appear out of the blue with a fix. Once or twice it even sent me to a fix right away. So I always send in the CER if I haven’t had a similar crash before.
And Steve – when a problem appears that even makes YOU cry for help – it’s a tough one!
I have used subscription from time to time, usually they are able to determine what the problem is, most of the time it is a bug that I need to wait on the next release for it to get fixed, and they most definitely do seem to try to find a solution.
I have used Subscription Support in the past – after I was able to get past the virtual thicket of login/permission/password-setup etc (which ate up **A LOT** of time I’ll never get back) I generally found one or more of the following to be the case with my support issues:
1- The support personnel seemed to be knowledgeable about the product, and made a sincere effort to assist me. Kudos for that. Even so…
2- The issue needed to be explained, re-explained, and explained yet again, before the support personnel finally ‘understood what the problem was’. In several cases it was necessary to send problem model files, screen shots, and even entire screen capture ‘movies’ before the light bulb came on. (I don’t know why this was the case – I’d like to think I did my best to communicate – but perhaps it was all my fault.) This ate up a whole lot more time, believe me.
3- The ‘answer’ to the problem was ‘the program just doesn’t do that’ or ‘why don’t you just explode it?’ or ‘it’s a known issue’ or something along those lines. I don’t think any issue was truly ‘fixed’.
That being said, as a matter of fact, I tried to use Subscription Support just this morning. (I haven’t had reason to do so for about the past 10 months now.)
After a dozen attempts or so to recall my damn password, I finally succeeded and managed to login.
When I went to the Tech Support link, I got a notice that my Subscription Support had been suspended… Wha? (We’re still on subscription.)
I called our reseller. They referred me to Autodesk Customer Support (phone #)
I called Autodesk. They said that the Subscription Contract Manager for my company had modified my permission and had removed Web-based support for me. (Interesting that, since he hasn’t logged in since probably over a year ago in order to GIVE me said support.)
So, now I’ll have to sit down with him later today to see if we can straighten this out yet again…
Sincerely, I really don’t think anyone is deliberately TRYING to mess things up this badly (I think I would start to lose faith in humanity if I believed that), it just seems that Autodesk is its own worst enemy.
I think the support for subscription is a crock of shit. The first week of me asking for tech support resulted in me being told to get a subscription, which I have, the seconde week was them finally telling me that my subscription was bronze and not gold there for I am not allowed support… When they tell me how I can upgrade to gold and finally get support from my reseller I will let you know. What are the best programs out there that aren’t owned by autodesk? … I really don’t like them anymore…
autodesk support isn’t worth the hair on my butt. i had the subscription with gold support for Maya in 2010. every single time i called, nothing was really solved. it was always a bug that needed to be logged and dealt with in a future release. sometimes they would never call back, etc, etc. they just don’t care at all. their support group for maya consists of two people in canada as far as i can tell. unfortunately its just a waste of money, unless you have cash to burn, that is.
i am not renewing my subscription and gold support in 2011. i’m so mad that i have spent so much time learning Maya, cause like the last commenter, i don’t like autodesk anymore. whoever is running the show over there has no idea what he/she is doing, period. bottom line, their support is a joke, and so is the company for that matter. its a shame.