Meraki Phone Support wait times are Horrible

[Gotchaa]

What happened, we are continuing to invest more into Meraki and their support times are very very bad now? Use to be 10 minutes, now hours!!!

I don't get why they don't hire more support call people??

The customer base has outgrown their support call agents and they have not done anything in over a year to fix it!

[COBIT]

I noticed the same thing. I waited 1.30 hours to get support and no solution as of a week later after trying to find the issue. Latest beta Firmware(s) break communication with Systems Manager authentication.

[MCITDept]

Just today, my assistant was on the phone with Meraki Support for over 4 hours, and was no closer to a resolution than when he first got on the phone.  So after the long wait now, you get someone on the phone that does not know how to help you, or what they may be doing.  This has gotten so out of hand, it is forcing us to take another look at our options.  We can replace all our hardware for less, than the cost of renewing our license with Meraki, if we use Ubiquiti branded equipment.  

Now I know that Ubiquiti is not at the same level as Meraki, but they are working hard to get there, and Meraki is working hard to let them.  Ubiquiti support is just as bad, but at least I can save a ton of $$$$$.   After today, that is about where I am at, when our license expire, we will be looking very hard at our options.  By then, about two years from now, maybe things will be different, on both sides.

As they say, when you're at the top, there is only one way to go!

[Gotchaa]

I had the same experience on another case. The support has decline and makes the premium we pay not worth the headaches.

[ITAVA]

I feel you. I have a 2+ hour ride to get to some of my sites. Then hold times are 1.5hr-over 2 hours. (Im referring to troubleshooting on site, same is when I work out of my office minus the drive times). Then they want you to perform more tests and continue on a later date and never call you back. Last week I was on hold for 1hr and 45 min, the person picked up and hung up right away. So I was down over 3 hours on hold with not talking to anyone. Howe does one bill their client for that?

I have been working with Meraki for over 9 years, never seen this. This is definitely very frustrating. 

However to your point of considering Ubiquity, they have absolutely zero support. With no licensing requirements also comes no support. So good luck with that. 

[MCITDept]

Ubiquiti has email support only, as far as I know now.  We use some of their equipment now, and in the past few months whenever we have had to contact support, it has been pretty quick for someone to return my emails, an hour or two tops so far.  I know that is not the same as talking with someone, but with wait times as long as we are having now with Meraki, it is about the same as not talking to someone.  

I have added more Ubiquiti equipment in the past year, than I thought I would, and I am still just sort of testing some of it, and I have to say, it has been very robust, hardly any issues at all.  I have some of the switches that have been running close to a year with no reboot, save the firmware upgrade reboot.

I still like Meraki products more at this point, but I am going to test and look at other options, so I can be ready to move either way when the time comes.  I just want to be prepared to do the right thing.  Good luck to you, and which ever way you end up taking.  It is hard to lose money to phone wait times that can tie you up for half the day!

[ITAVA]

Thank you for the reply. 

True Email support, I personally put that up there with Google support, almost. But like you said, if they can respond with a helpful email in less time that you spend waiting for someone to pick up a phone, by all means. 

That said, once Meraki does pick up a phone, the person that answers is the one that helps and they are pretty good at it. In the many years and multiple cases I have opened, rarely did anything go unresolved. 
Also the deep packet inspection of crazy troubleshooting I have performed over the years is unparalleled to anythign youd get by email support. By anyone. I just completed a 5+ hour phone call wit Meraki troubleshooting some stuff. I could not imagine doing that in emails, it woudl take weeks. So there are pluses and minuses in each. 

That said I use Ubiquity for my lower than Meraki tier clients. Still great stuff but I use it in deployments that can suffer that too. So its a judgement call. I presently have many organizations to take care of. The dashboard allows me to manage all them and be proactive for most things. So thats great too. 
Anyway, cheers, I think Meraki will get it back together. They got super popular over COVID. Stufff has been selling out big time, now almost 60 day lead times. So the support is overwhelmed. 

I think if they at least had a opportunity to enter your phone no so an available engineer can call back when avail, that would help take that witing pain away.. a bit. 

Cheers

[MCITDept]

Read my post up near the top again, most of the support folk we have had to talk to lately have been lacking in knowledge of Meraki.  They used to have the best support period, and I really hope they get back there real soon, but either way you are correct, you can't do a 5 hour phone call over emails.

One of our last calls was 4 hours, and no closer to a fix than when we first got on the call.  The poor guy did not know what he was doing, so they have had to hire some that have not been trained correctly or had enough time to train.  I can understand that to a point, they have sold so much that the customer base is way too large for the amount of support they currently have.

I sure am hoping they can turn this around for the better, and get back to where support was before.