Red Hat Inc. (Headquarters)

Through the Department of the Navy(DON) program, I signed up for the Standard Red Hat ROL subscription through DLT.
First Off let me say, It is a good plan. The Program provides Good Content and Good Information. Their Technical Support and Customer Service is Really bad. I have been using it for almost a year. There Technical Support has NEVER given me a good answer for any of the tickets I have opened. I have always had to find the answers myself. I have opened tickets asking questions. They come back with answers like "That is not my responsibility" or "That relates to a question on the exam and I'm not going to answer it". Most of the time when I open a ticket, I get a response saying: Thanks for contacting Red Hat Support. We are looking into your request. Then 3 days later, I will get a response that is totally irrelevant to the question I asked. Either I will tell them the answer to the question I asked or I just say "Close the Ticket" Sometimes after 3 days, they will come back with another question. But, by that time, I moved on to something else. There is NO sense of Urgency what so ever. The VMs in the labs where not working a couple weeks ago. I opened a ticket and asked them to PLEASE fix it. I was getting ready to take an exam. I got an email saying, We are looking into it. A few days later I got an email asking which labs? I said, basically all the labs. A couple days later they said, they restarted the DHCP server in the classroom and it should be working. No sense of Urgency.

They make things very difficult for me. I was trying to sign up for an exam on the PSI website for 3 days. I could get to it, But, nobody was there to help me sign up for an exam in the CHAT window. I tried in the morning, afternoon and night. The only date I could find was 2 months out. I talked to Redhat. They said, We can't help you. I asked them to give me a phone number for PSI. THey said, they didn't have one. I called a couple numbers on the PSI website. They said, they don't support what I was doing and wanted my Social Security #.

I went in to take the Engineer exam in Reston 12/5/17. It was set up for 13:30. I got there a little early. I went in this little room to take the exam. I sat there for 3 hours before I could start the exam. It was after 16:30 before I could start. The Proctor kept saying, It is because of the Sponsor Red Hat. They did not apologize for that delay. But, they did give me a score of 70/300 on the exam. I was prepared for the exam. I studied, literally 100's of hours on the ROL website. Did the labs numerous times, got 100% on all the practice exams. What does that say about ROL?

I went to Columbia, MD to take the SA exam on 12/28/17. I started the exam at 16:30. I signed all the Non-Disclosure forms and stuff. I started the exam by Configuring the Server Networking and the Repo Communication to work. Did some other critical things before I could start doing the tasks. I completed all the tasks with a half hour to spare, Except for 2 tasks. One was very basic from the ROL lab. It just wouldn't let me do it. The other task was more complex. But, I have done it many times. It involves several steps. I went through all the steps. But, I just couldn't make it work. I did the other 10 tasks, No Problem. I got my score of 118/300. That makes NO sense! It is ridiculous! I set up the servers and did ALL the tasks. I rebooted the server a couple times to make sure there was no problems.
There is nothing to do! There is No Accountability or Over-site on their end. You take what they give you. I signed the Non-Disclosure Agreements. I've been here before. You do not question The Man Behind the Curtain pulling the levers. He is the Great Wizard of OZ. If you do, They threaten you with Legal action.

I set up a meeting with the Red Hat Instructor for 13:00 on Friday 12/29/17. He asked what number he should call me at. I gave him 2 numbers. But, he never called. I kept asking in the ticket. Where are you? I'm waiting. There is no Accountability.
Please tell me! Where is the problem? Is it just me?

I provide a critical Service to the Navy and support every Sailor at Sea. I've been doing Unix/Linux Engineering Support for over 25 years. I have certifications in Several Different versions of Unix. I know Redhat Linux better than 90% of the engineers up there and I would truly be happy to go Head to Head to prove it. I've sent several emails asking to talk with them. They just ignore them. I've never received service like this. I've complained, but it only got worse. I need to get the certification. But, at this rate I will never get it.

Follow UP:

I sent this email to customer service on Early January. I got an email from Claude that night saying someone may call you, Nobody Called. 3 days later they closed the ticket.
The next day that sent me an email to evaluate their Service.

A month later I sent this complaint to my Director, who sent it to Red Hat Executive Vice President, Paul Cormier. He did an investigation. A few weeks later, He confirmed everything and said, they need to polish up there Customer Service skills. But, other than that. They where doing a good job. He said, I had opened a lot of tickets early on. That is true. I did open a lot of tickets. But, they NEVER gave me a good answer to any of questions I asked. They did answer ONE question relating to the keyboard in the lab not acting right. I asked them a follow up question to that keyboard question, that they never answered.

A couple months ago I got an email from Robin and wanted to know if I was satisfied with their Service. I said, No and he said he would take point and look into this. I never heard from him again.

Cold email from sales rep. Email was for one of our key personnel, not publicly available, not on our technology staff. Not acquired honestly.Cold-email from [redacted] sales rep. No one from our company has ever given contact information to Red Hat.[redacted] is not affiliated with our tech staff, and has never interacted with Red Hat tech sales. -----Original Message-----From: [redacted] mailto:[redacted] Sent: Friday, March 27, 2015 9:44 AMTo:[redacted]Subject: Quick Question[redacted],I'm contacting you from Red Hat; I'm part of the team who services your company. I am reaching out to grab time on your calendar to understand your interest on Red Hat Storage. How does Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of next week work for you?Best regards,[redacted]Red Hat Inc.Incubation TeamStorage SpecialistPhone:978-[redacted]Storage ProductsDesired SettlementExplanation of how our emails were acquired. Disciplinary action against whoever dishonestly acquired our contact information. Business Response Hello - I'm writing on behalf of Red Hat. Red Hat first received notice of this case via email for the first time today, 4/27/15 - we have no other record of this case. Please permit us to reach out to [redacted] to resolve and provide a formal response. Thank you -Consumer Response [redacted] mistakenly used his work email and forgot about it. Thank you for the explanation. Please excuse the confusion. Thank you for taking the time to look into this!Final Business Response We received confirmation from this consumer that we were able to satisfy his request and he considers this issue resolved.Comments from ticket included here:[redacted] 05:55 pm Hi [redacted] -Thank you for the follow-up - and for confirming this is resolved.Kind regards,[redacted]Red Hat Customer Service[redacted] Yesterday 04:06 pmHi [redacted],Thank you for looking into this. Feel free to close this case as "resolved".He does not remember doing this, but clearly you acquired the email through legitimate means.All the best,[redacted] Tuesday 09:19 amHi [redacted] -Thank you for allowing us to investigate this for you.Our records indicate the last week of March 2015 [redacted] requested a white paper for download on how Red Hat Storage and Intel Processor work together. The form requires certain contact information be provided in advance of accessing the whitepaper. We received the contact information for [redacted] from this form.Here is a link to the whitepaper:Https://[redacted]The email that followed to [redacted] was our marketing follow-up from the expressed interest in the whitepaper.Please let me know if this answers your question and if further details are required.Kind Regards -[redacted]Red Hat Customer Service