Feedback on Veeam technical support

[awojtowicz]

in my 17+ years in the IT field i have never seen a company so bad in support. its been like this since day one of buying Veeam. usually it takes an hour to hour and a half until you actually talk to someone. Now i just tried calling in and this tech tells me he has other phone calls so he cant talk to me. wants to work on this by email! what the hell do i pay premium support for? everytime i call all they do is point you to documents. i can do that too. i have found them myself but i have questions or they arent working. now this tech didnt say a word to me, he just put me on hold.

i think its time to pack Veeam in and move on and use Symantec for my backups. i know people say use veeam but its not worth the headaches. i need to find a contact of someone higher up to make a complaint.

[Vitaliy S.]

Andrew, I am sorry, but I have just checked your support contract and you have STANDARD support only, and not Premium.

Response times depend on your level of support and ticket severity (your last ticket was opened with severity 3), and are documented in our support policy. For example, because Standard support is only provided during business hours, when opening support ticket on Friday you may only hear back from support the following Monday. This is normal. Likewise, Premium support customers get priority over Standard support customers obviously.

Anyway, If you feel that your support ticket was not handled optimally I strongly recommend that you to request callback from support manager, and let him know about the problem. This will both help you, and help us improve the support service.

Thank you!

[awojtowicz]

i thought i had premium support, but i was wrong. but this doesn't have anything to do with what support level you have. it still takes an hour or more till someone answers the phone. plus, the tech telling you he has too many phone calls so he can't talk right now. i never heard that. if that was a normal company that person would be fired. then he just put me on hold to get rid of me. that was unprofessional. i did get a hold of someone finally and a manager is supposed to call but i haven't received any calls yet. but i think i have my issue resolved now with help from Cody.

i do like the ease of the product. I've always said that to people but the support is horrendous.

[lobo519]

I too have had rather unpleasant experiences with Veeam support. The inital response is usually fast but any subsequent is days in between.Their responses are so canned they don't even have anything to do with the issue at hand. 9 times out of 10 I fix this issue myself while waiting for support.

I have filled out several surveys but have not heard back from anyone or seen any changes.

I agree there needs to be a serious moment to improve support. When you wait 24 hours and get "Have you tried restarting the Veeam server" Something is very wrong.....

The product is top notch though!!!

[Vitaliy S.]

Thank you for your honest feedback guys.

Andrew, good to know that your issue has been resolved with the help from Cody. Also I have been notified by our Support Director that he tried to reach you, I hope that you've managed to talk to each other.

[gchapman]

I'll chime in with my experiences because they have been the complete opposite from yours. I've had to engage Veeam support on 3 occasions in the last 2 years. In one case, the issue was complex and required involving the engineering team to fix the issue. I found the support group to be overly responsive at times, with daily emails and calls for status updates that continued until the issue was fully resolved.

Do keep in mind, even with my Plat support with VMware and IBM, I don't always get a person on the phone when I call, and those companies have resources that far outstrip those of what Veeam is currently capable of providing. I like that Veeam will follow up on support calls/tickets after they are completed, and I would use that feedback solution as a means to help them better serve their customers.

just my .02

[Gostev]

Well, the big part of Andrew's issue is that he expected Premium support while not actually having one purchased...

[markwyeth]

Luckily I have only had to use them once and while not quick, the job wasn't urgent and the problem was because I was new to the product.

As a comparison we also use CommVault. I have to contact them all the time (very complicated product) and their response times are no different to what you have experienced with Veeam, one ticket took almost 3 months to resolve. Also the CommVault maintenance costs are significantly amount more Veeam.

Cheers Mark

[sparky50]

Hi,
I will tell you that I am a Veeam reseller, but with most vendors, I don't think that gives me better response... probably worse, as I am not an end user. End users are always #1 to vendors.

I have used Veeam technical support about three, or four times as I can recall. Each time I have contacted them by email. I don't wish to waste time sitting on the phone, and email gives me the opportunity to fully explain my problem, without the tech having to think on the fly.

What distinguished Veeam support in my mind was the quality of the response I received. It was obvious I was hearing back from someone who understood the product, and the problems. Other vendors tech support tend to respond asking questions that I already answered in my original email. That annoys me greatly. This forum is also a great resource!

So I rate Veeam (email support at least) quite good.

Garth

[Tommi]

hi everyone.

i just want to give my 2 cent.

i have ben using veeam support alot the last serval mounths.
the short version.

i think veeam have good support,, i get response quisk, eventhough the first 1-3 ansvers are "standard have you tried restarting" kind, as soon as i get a senior tech on the horn,, i get my problem fixed fast.

so thank you veeam, keep up the good work.
cheers
Tommi

[crichardson]

Veeam is a growing company and I'm sure they are having some growing pains right now. Everyone switching to ESXi 5 doesn't make it any better. Lower severity tickets are never going to see immediate repsonse, even VMWare can take up to 4 hours to get back to me, or even days if the issue isn't affecting production. I'm a happy customer.

[cby]

Interesting comments. I have experienced good and bad support from Veeam.

Generally, when things go wrong as users we want an instant resolution. Even more so with backups since they are an integral part of any IT service.

Couple of things to bear in mind when dealing with support:

1. Provide as much 'static' relevant information as possible in your initial contact with support: product, version nos. (Veeam, ESX, VC...), zipped up (relevant) logs, IP addreses, host names, screenshots etc. -- you can't provide too much (non-sensitive) info!
2. Be pro-active: give step-by-step account of what occurred, even suggestions as to what you think might have happened, context or changes in backup environment

Having said that, you may find support requesting information you have already provided. So while it may be tedious to do so, set out the issues you are reporting in a clear, concise way right from the start, use bullet-points rather than rambling sentences.

One of the drawbacks can be the language barrier that sometimes leads to misunderstandings and delays in finding a resolution.

I have noticed that Veeam's initial resolution suggestions have taken on a more cavalier approach recently. Suggestions like upgrade Veeam, install Veeam on a different server, stop and restart VMs. The reality is that this is often not an option in a large production environment. I understand that with a growing user base the demands on support get stretched. But the perception of a product can be adversely affected by this kind of initial response from support.

Don't be afraid to ask for the issue to be escalated. Oh yes, and try not to get too personal when reporting problems!

[rciscon]

My support experiences with Veeam have ranged from Fair to Excellent, with the important factor that they have yet to fail to resolve the issue.

As for your claims about Veeam having the worst support, you obviously don't own any Symantec products.

Our "other" backup product is Backup Exec 2010 R2 from Symantec, and trying to get issues resolved with them is only slightly less painful than banging two bricks against your head.

[msidnam]

My support experiences with Veeam have ranged from Fair to Excellent, with the important factor that they have yet to fail to resolve the issue.

As for your claims about Veeam having the worst support, you obviously don't own any Symantec products.

Our "other" backup product is Backup Exec 2010 R2 from Symantec, and trying to get issues resolved with them is only slightly less painful than banging two bricks against your head.

I feel the same way about Syncsort.

I haven't had any issues with Veeam support.

[mwiseley]

My experience has been mixed as well. Once a ticket gets escalated I get great response, but with the initial tickets many times it takes a day to get a response and the response is either something I have already told them I did or is something like restart a service. I know the company is growing and hope they look at support and try to find ways to improve. If I have an open case and I respond to the email and it is a level 2 ticket and I have premium support it should not take a 1/2 a day or a day to get a response. Just my 2 cents. I love the product and hope the support gets better before it tarnishes the companies reputation.

Thanks

[cyberswb]

I have had only once support contact with Veeam, and on a 1-5 star rating I'd call it 1.5 stars at best.

I felt that my actual issue I wanted addressed wasn't addressed; instead my log files got fed through some kind of automated error-finding tool and I got a list of canned solutions to old problems (many of which were resolved already) that didn't address my issue. I find this kind of response unhelpful in the extreme.

I could have pursued the issue and pressed my case, but I ended up finding a different workaround that made my specific error moot. While I'm still curious about my specific errors, the response I did get led me to believe that getting an answer to my problem would be yet another trip to technology support purgatory, and I have neither the time nor energy to do that to satisfy my curiosity.

I can't judge all possible support incidents from a single one, but considering how low the bar is for technology support generally, it's not encouraging.

[JohnG]

I've had to use Veeam tech support a handful of times at different employers and I can honestly say that Veeam support is one of the worst I've encountered. I've experienced the same run-around and unhelpful replies that people have mentioned. Whenever they get around to replying to emails, I usually hear: Restart, reinstall, recreate, send logs, etc.

These days, I don't even bother creating a ticket and try to figure it out myself. Basically, I'm just waiting for something else half-way decent to appear and switch.

[cby]

As I said, interesting comments...

What I would say, is that if it wasn't for the forum...

[Ben Milligan]

Hi guys - we certainly appreciate the feedback. We are certainly growing quite fast and want to ensure we meet our goals stated in our support policy, so we are happy to see you are taking the time to let us know about challenges you have faced with our support team.

What I want to tell you, is that WE ARE LISTENING!

We have recently established a number of tools at your disposal for working with our team, via our customer portal: http://cp.veeam.com We are constantly updating our Knowledge Base, which was put in place just several months ago. Our customer base has exploded in volume, and we are working very hard to ensure you receive the support you are entitled to. This may not be the best place however to ensure your feedback is directed at the right folks. We have added a "Talk to a Manager" button on our customer portal, that allows you to send a direct shot to our Support Management team in the case you are not getting the support you need. Don't hesitate to use it!

To anyone here that needs specific help on a specific case, please remember, this is NOT a support forum. PM me a case number, or use the Customer Portal, so you can drive the severity of your ticket (http://www.veeam.com/files/veeam_softwa ... policy.pdf). Our response times are based on this. You have the power here, and we are happy to help!

[k00laid]

I just want to add the experience that I've had over the past 16 hours. We are very much so under the gun with a legal issue requiring us to have a SureBackup job up and running. Unfortunately this came up shortly after we upgraded to v6 and our jobs didn't want to start correctly. Yesterday I created case 5172237 with Severity 1, and the initial engineer was very helpful with getting the job to launch all the way up. After terminating the support call it was discovered that while everything seemed to be running, I had a Active Directory issue so I called back on the same ticket last night. Again, engineer was very helpful and knowledgeable, immediately started a Webex session in that time frame Active Directory actually worked and the lab worked as expected.

Unfortunately an hour later the SureBackup Virtual Lab crashed. I believe this was because the physical server which v6 runs on ran out of available memory (was reporting 98% of 6 GB shortly before the crash). I doubled the available RAM for the box so I think I have solved the reliability issue, although this has been a reoccuring theme with our organization and Veeam Support and not once has this been suggested as a solution. I then started the job again, learning that I again had a nonfunctioning Active Directory system.

So at 7 AM this Saturday morning, I called Veeam support again. After being on hold and 1st in line for over 45 minutes, I spoke to an engineer. His first response (after I told him that I was well past the deadline I was given and time was of the essence) was that because the engineer assigned to my case was not on duty he'd update the ticket and I'd have to wait until he came back on duty. I told him that was not acceptable, that I needed assistance now, not when ever the engineer came back on duty. He then told me to send him the logs and I told him there was already a set uploaded. It went back and forth for a while but the end result is that your engineer got exactly what he wanted, the ability to pass the buck to the next person as I am uploading another set of logs as we speak and he got to hang up. I am guessing that your shift change back to the US call center is sometime around now and he didn't want to work over.

I'd like to say that this is the first time I've had conversations with Veeam support that went this way, but it isn't. I find that there is a remarkable difference in customer service and initiative to work through a case when you talk to Stateside support engineers and their Russian counterparts. While I'm sure they are excellent technical staff, I have no idea because every single time I have been told to send logs and then wait for a call back. This has stretched to 2+ days before waiting for a call back.

I will be calling back in about 30 minutes hoping that the shifts have changed and that I will get some willing to work on this issue.

[rfarquharson]

Support has gone down hill, recently. When the company first started and was not well known the support was better.

I currently have a ticket opened for failed replications, i was told by the tech unless my issue is level 1 then communication would be email more than likely. i would think after over a week with no replicas, i would be worthy of a phone call.

It is extremely frustrated and question why pay for support. I can relate with anothe ruser who said the majority of the time he fixes the issue before he gets a response back. How ever in this case I am unable to.
Veeam is great product unfortunately there support base is small and resulted to POS emails every 4 hours or other day.

[cag]

After reading this Thread and as a new Veeam customer I decided to test support. Based on a simple problem using replication.
1st replication from local to DR site 100%, 2nd replication failed after proxy code on the DR site Crashed / Stopped responding ( not sure ) failed after 50%. may be network related etc dont know and dont care.
3rd attempt wont start at all displays nothing but programmer code errors.
Anyways sent support request with complete logs as requested and nothing yet.

Created on 2012-02-12 on website. Did not make in the queue until Tue 02/14/2012 8:40 AM so there is the first problem. Seeams email go into a queue until some has time to enter into some system.

in the email the following was sent. I entered as a Sev 3

Our response times are outlined below for your convenience:
Standard Support - Initial Response Times Premium Support - Initial Response Times
Severity 1 2 hours
Severity 2 8 business hours
Severity 3 12 business hours

I guess a rating of 0. Failed in processing the email request 2days to start the process and after 24 hours still no response.

I tested V5 of the product 1 year ago, discovered a bunch of design flaws in replication. Contacted support (AAAAHHHHH then ) and decided not to purchase the product (Good choice ), support was very bad then and I see its still very bad.

So after 1 year decided to look if the design flaws have been corrected. First impression was very good. Then I decided to test and I am running into the same problem. To many bugs for a production backup and disaster recovery insurance policy. These products must be rock solid. The only option is to use 3 differnet products. Hopefully they all dont fail with similar problems.

Backup and recovery products suck. None are rock solid that we can depend on. So you hope support is something you can depend on and Veeam support is not one of them.

The best way to provide great support is not to need it. Build a rock solid app before releasing to the public.

[Ben Milligan]

Conrad - Evaluation have no SLA, this is stated in our support policy. We appreciate your feedback.

[Gostev]

I see that our moderators have cleaned up a few off-topic posts (including ones from our own support engineers). There is no need to start an argument and bickering here. Every instance of negative feedback on specific support cases should and will be reviewed by our support management.

I would like to remind everyone that we have now established a quick and easy way for customers to contact support management directly in case you believe you are not getting good service from your support engineer. To do that, open customer support portal at http://vee.am/support and look for Talk to a Manager button. Do keep in mind that until you tell them, they will simply not know there is a problem!

While support management does not monitor these forums, they are all subscribed to Talk to a Manager distribution list, and they will react to your request immediately. So, if you want to share feedback on your support engineer (bad or good), or just want to share ideas on how would you like to see our service improved, kindly please do utilize this ability.

I would like to make it very clear that we do appreciate all the feedback (including negative), as it helps us to improve our support service and keep customer satisfaction rate on the highest level possible. In fact, based on the quick survey each customer receives when the support case is closed, the current satisfaction level is 93% (up from 89% from 1 year ago), which is extremely high for this industry.

Occasionally, some people may be upset with support - these things always happen, no matter of vendor. Sometimes concerns are valid, and other times - based on deeper investigation - not at all (such in case with the original poster on this thread). On the other hand, it is in human nature that very few people come here to post about their good experiences, but as soon as something bad happens, everyone rushes to forums to blame support. I am sure you will agree that this paints a bad picture of our support, which is however the opposite from reality based on feedback from those surveys (and we get a few hundred of those daily).

For example - without calling any names - I've just looked up support statistics for just one person in this thread. In the past few months, he had created 8 support cases, all of which have been promptly resolved by our support. In fact, 2 of those 8 ended up with our support troubleshooting and finding the environmental issue with his VMware deployment (when they could have just redirect him to VMware support). He never filled up a quick survey for either of those 8 support cases (so, you would think he is generally quite happy). But then, the same person opens 9th case, feels that his support case is not being handled correctly, and immediately comes here to post negative feedback on our support in general, not even taking into account all the assistance he received before, with our support engineers clearly going an extra mile on more than one occasion to assist him. This is not really a fair way to treat our support, in my opinion.

Also, while many people (including myself) do like drama, let's try to keep these forums technical - clear of feedback that really should go elsewhere, and investigated by the appropriate managers. I am on the road for the past 3 weeks, with very little time to devote to the forum. When I finally found some time today, I had to spend nearly 3 hours reading this topic, communicating with the support team, performing my own investigations, and writing this post. Instead, I would be able to reply to 20-30 topics on technical product matters - but now, they would have to wait for the next 24 hours while I am airborne crossing 12 time zones. Please, help me help you.

[dellock6]

Forums always hosts talibans (both fans and haters) more than moderate people.
Anyway, I pick beer and popcorn everytime I see these flames going in, here as in other vendors forums, it's always fun reading loooong complaints (especially when they come from guys who did not bought v5 neither v6, but they took time to post more than 60 posts here...). My 2 cents.

Luca.

[gvinpin]

Some times I get frustrated, but problem are getting fixed. I guess Veeam as any fast growing company having problems to adjust to the fact that they are a 24/7 global company.
But, the quality of support is good.

[DonFirst]

[merged]

Hello
Dear VEEAM crew.I would like to ask you why your SUPPORT team ignore the customer?
I reported the problem to you on 20 of February- backup does not work
After 3 days fighting with support /nobody wants to solve my problem /.Support TEAM establish WebEx session with my workstation.
And now the best
After five minutes I heard that this is vmware problem not veeam.
It is interesting that VMware says the same thing about veeam
If you are not interest in solving customers' problems you should sell your products without the support.
I felt completely ignored, and the WebEx session was a farce.I was left alone with my problem
My case number is 5173975
Regards

[Gostev]

Hello, you should submit this feedback to the support management though our support portal at http://vee.am/support (click Talk to a Manager button). Thanks!

[homerjnick]

I am in the middle of our first ever rollout of Veeam...everything has been fine but had one issue with indexing guests that required a hotfix...

Logged the call yesterday via this portal and I included every detail like I was on the latest patch etc...got an email with the link to the hotfix in a few hours and it fixed the issue.

The product is amazing and was impressed wit my first contact with support...

[ittech]

NO CHANGE, STILL HORRIBLE SUPPORT

Two cases ever, first one took over a week to even get a first response, took nearly 2 months to resolve. Second case I just filed last week about the cloud edition being discontinued and wanting the cloudberry license they offer. Been a week now, and still no license.

I'm very happy I'm not putting any of my other 20 clients through this crap. I don't care how amazing everyone thinks the product is. Without good support it's NOTHING!