It was discussed on HN a few days ago: the size of the company is inversely proportional to the quality of their support. After the company reaches a certain size, they can simply afford not to care. Also, in this case it makes more business sense for them. Therefore I prefer to deal with smaller companies.
Apple has absolutely fantastic support, and remain outrageously profitable regardless.
Years back I bought a Nexus and chose an engraving option. I got the phone and it wasn't engraved so I contacted Google mostly to make sure I wasn't going to be shipped multiple phones (after battling the various prevent you from contacting us bosses).
I mean, I bought the phone from them, from their site, with Google branding on it, paying Google, with a warranty theoretically provided by Google, etc. Eventually someone responded giving me the phone number for HTC. No, you contact HTC, Google.
That was the last voluntarily purchased Google device I bought. I did get a couple more Nexus phones for development purposes, but did so begrudgingly. The Pixel line of phones and tablets...not a chance in the world.
Wow, HTC. That must have been a while ago. Was it a Nexus One?
I think the relationship was similar for the LG and Huawei Nexuses, but Google is now the "manufacturer" for the Pixel line, so hopefully things have improved.
You say this, but I've had some great experiences with Microsoft support over the years, both on the hardware and software side. I hear good things about Apple's support too.
Agreed, even with a simple home license I've called Microsoft and been shocked at how competent they are. Pretty weird and complex issues too.
But doesn't Google in particular have a reputation for nonexistent or terrible support? It's not part of their culture, everything is a beta and it's no big deal if it doesn't work right?
An open phone cannot come fast enough. It may well be even buggier at first but if it's like my experience with Linux over the last 17 years it will only get steadily better since the developer's incentives are actually largely aligned with mine.
I must give Microsoft credit too actually. I've spoken with them 3 times over home licensing of windows. Each time they were very quick and thorough in sorting the issue.
In fact, during one of the last big windows 10 updates something failed for me in carrying the license over and they took time to investigate the incident in order to determine how to prevent it again for future updates.
the thing that surprised me was they _cared_ that something was wrong and were _interested_ in fixing to and preventing it happening again. Been a while since I dealt with a company that did that.
Actually, thinking about it I should probably switch to companies that do care about this stuff.
Apple support is spot on. While I'm disappointed by the decline in quality of their products (namely the macbook pro), when I had to return my MBP 2017 a year after I bought it, and 3 months after they replaced the faulty keyboard, they were very supportive and refunded me the full amount. They're also very easy to talk to and treat you with respect unlike Google support (from my experience).
Had an awesome experience with german Amazon support - he was very friendly and helpful, sent an e-mail afterwards where he explained how the problem occured in more detail and got in touch with their tech team, which fixed the problem in few hours and then send me a handwritten e-mail (not automated) apologizing for the problem.
