Endpoint Protection

12.1 RU1 has been a nightmare.  From the failed upgrade, through support recommending I start over from scratch because they couldn't figure out why my db wouldn't upgrade, to more database issues after completely rebuilding the install, many hours on the phone with support, and weeks of waiting for them to get back to me while they researched the issue.  

I spoke with support again tonight, and was told that it will probably be a couple of days before they get back to me again, because it has to go up the chain a couple of levels to get to the research team, then back down the chain a couple of levels to him, so that he can contact me and tell me what the research team wants me to try next.  Why can't I work directly with a level of support that is capable of fixing the problem, instead of spending days waiting for the front line support reps to play telephone and pass messages back and forth with secret research teams?  

We pay good money for support on this product, and up until recently I've always felt like we got our money's worth.  When something went wrong, it seemed like symantec support knew what they were doing and things were fixed quickly and fixed right.  The several calls I've had in the last 2-3 months with support have been just the opposite.  It seems like the support reps are just following a script, trying things that don't apply, or that they don't know how or why it might help, doing the same things over and over again, and worst of all trying to treat the symptom, and not the real cause.  

I'm getting a lot of pressure from above to get this fixed.  We have a partially functional SEP/SEPM deployment, but that's not good enough.  Who do I need to contact to make things happen?

Can you escalate to your Account Manager?

Who is your Symantec Account manager?  Also did you work w/ a partner at all on the implementation?  If you know your Symantec Account Manager reach out to him/her first and mention not only the problems you are having, but the case # you are working w/.

If you did the implementation w/ a Symantec partner they might know the right people to call as well reach out to that group as well.

If that doesn't work next time you are on the phone w/ support ask to speak with the duty manager or escalation manger to figure out how to get ht case escalated and improved.

Good luck :)

You call call teh support and request to speak to a Duty Manger

Gai-Jin-- Speaking to duty manager would help.

Hello,

PM me your case numbers and I may assist you to the same.

Also, Check the Procedures - 

http://www.symantec.com/support/SymcSupptFundamt_AMR_Cust.pdf

http://www.symantec.com/support/Symantec_SEE.pdf

Escalate to Multiple Users/Groups page

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO46379

Hope that helps!!

Hi,

I am sorry to read about this kind of experience, most of the times there is a misunderstanding on why the investigation is taking long time. You should contact the Duty Manager or your Account Manager.

Regarding what you call "chain", in any place there is a hierarchy and this is not a problem but an advantage, you need to explain the issue only once to an engineer instead of doing it several times which would be a real waste of your time while our internal communication is more efficient.

We have had the same experience. RU1 has been a disaster. More problems than we can count and tech support has been little/no help. We have been able to escalate some of the issues but still have received no answers. Based on what we are seeing I would absolutely recommend you NOT try to upgrade to RU1 yet.

Please see -

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/major-issues-sep-upgrade-1107-121-ru1

Thanks for the suggestions.  If we have an account manager, I don't know who that would be or how to contact them.  I will try the duty manager suggestion.  I get that they're trying to figure out what is wrong, but it's gone on far too long at this point.  I need to be done with this one way or another.  

We already tried, in early december, a fresh install of SEPM and importing nothing but the old certificate, and that lasted less than 2 weeks before issues started cropping back up.  At this point, if we have to reinstall 12.1 w/o RU1 and NOT import even the communications  certificate, then that's what we've got to do.  (Though, support seems certain that RU1 has nothing to do with it, because "We have many other customers with this installed and working properly")  I'm just afraid we'll also have to remove/re-install all of the clients out there, to be really sure that the problem won't come back.  I am not looking forward to that.

Gai-Jin-

Have you involved or notified your Account Team about the issues that your are having?

I don't know if we have an account team, or how to contact them if we do.

Your comments reflect what I feel about first contact with Symantec Technical Support.  You'll get an L1 support rep who in my experience basically gives me info which I've already found in the KB or Connect forums.  Most of the time when I open a case, I'm beyond requiring basic info and need an L2 or higher engineer with access to a test environment so they can replicate my issue.  I agree that L1 support reps seem to be following a script or are only book smart and have difficulties adjusting to real-world issues that may come up in disparate environments.

Anyway, asking for a Duty Manager is a tip I didn't know about so have to give it a shot in the future if need be.  Also, I was recently told by my Symantec Account Rep. (although have yet to try it) that I should be able to ask for a "stateside" support rep when I call which escalates you to L2 or higher support.  Your post and those by a few others in the forums is a reason why I've been hesitant to migrate off of SEP 11; especially when you and others are seeing issues with the latest SEP release (12.1 RU1).

Let me share few tips for critical case escalation:

1) Raise a case to Support, request for highest priority case

2) Give 2-3 days maximum until they found  resolution

3) If no solution or they said need more time, directly contact On-Duty Manager on the 2nd/3rd day morning, request for support directly from Advance Team

4) Advance Team will normally help you out or if required they will contact the Engineering Team

5) If none of the above didn't manage to get their highest attention, contact your country Symantec Principal/ Account Manager and request for help

regards

i told myself soem time back that i should never contact the symantec technical team. Because istead of answering the same question, following same procdure for a record four five time and making no progress, i can make use symantec connect fourum and do it my self..

How critical it is when a sepm having client count more than eight thousand is not able to process the downloaded live update definitions and does not serve updates to clients.?

Quite critical...

Anyway, as many people stated above... do talk with the On-duty Manager and ask for urgent help.

Gai-Jin-

The account team is the Sales Manager (Rep) and SE (Systems Engineer) who come in and see you and/or IT management about Symantec products.

I have read the comments posted here and thought I would share our experience.

We are now running SEP 12 RU1 and are very pleased with it. Several of the issues we were having were actually incorrect settings migrated from previous versions.There are also a lot of issues resolved with the RU1.

That said, I have also had some negative experiences with the first level of support when I have called in. However, I did speak to my account team and escalated the call ticket. The representative I was assigned after the escalation was FANTASTIC. He was very familiar with the product, not afraid to say he needed to research something further and get back to me, patient, and helped with several issues.

We are running on a virtual server (Windows Server 2008 Datacenter). Clients range from a small number of Win XP's. Vista 32 bit and Win 7 64 bit. We have nearly 2000 clients spread over the whole state, in over 100 locations. We battle bandwidth issues and need to minimize impact on our clients during the work day. Using GUPs (Group Update Providers) correctly has helped with many of our issues. However, just correcting a few settings fixed most of the problems.

I will also add that managing SEP for our branch is only one of my duties. Since it is NOT my only duty, I do require more "hand holding" than those folks who have a dedicated responsibility to SEP and can concentrate on just it. I need SEP to run without a lot of intervention on my, and my other team members, part. We have made huge progress toward this goal. A little more work this week and we should be there.

Comparted to past upgrades, I think the leap from 11 to 12 and now to 12.1.1000.157 RU1, have been by far the easiest.

I encourage you to contact your Sales Manager and/or Systems Engineer and ask for their assistance. I also specifically asked for someone state side. This helped with communication as well. 

Hope this is an encouragement to many of you having problems.

To my knowledge, we have never been contacted by anyone like that.  I checked with my boss, he was also completley unaware that we had an account rep.  I did contact symantec sales now, and they gave me a name and number, so hopefully this will help.

Somehow I missed this post originally.  Just saw it when re-reading the thread.  I will take you up on the offer of help if the gentleman I called doesn't get back to me this afternoon.

Thanks

we can check with the Duty manager and escalated to account manager.

Well, now I have got an email from symantec saying that because the original issue that was the subject of the ticket has been fixed, they are closing the ticket and I'll have to start over and open a new one for any outstanding issues.  

The fact that many of my outstanding issues were caused by changes the symantec rep made while troubleshooting the first issue doesn't seem to matter.  Or the fact that the 'original' issue was already fixed before the ticket was ever escalated to tier 2.  I think it's just been put aside long enough now that this is a convenient excuse to close the ticket and start over.