[RANT] - Cisco TAC

Apologies if this off topic but I believe it's something that should be shared. I've been working with Cisco since 2003 and always thought they had stellar post sales support but the last five years or so have been really terrible. In this latest case, I had a C3750X pass away and needed an RMA through our valid SmartNet contract. This should be an easy process. It took 2 months and (this is not an exaggeration) 8 separate TAC engineers assigned to the case to resolve and in the end it was us telling TAC what they were doing wrong (wrong UDI-PID in license). The RMA arrived over night; however, getting the IP Services / Advantage license transferred over was a nightmare. For reasons unknown to me, generating a license is very difficult and naturally, about a month into this, SmartNet expired on the device. Cisco dropped us like it was hot so fast. The case was closed immediately and emails would not be responded to and we got stuck with an RMA with the wrong license until we renewed SmartNet (which was already in the pipeline and in process). It took another month of back and forth passive emails with Cisco (why we kept getting assigned people that only respond at 2am PST is beyond me). It wasn't until we spent the better part of a day calling Cisco over and over and over again until someone finally generated the correct license for us. Point being this was the final straw for me and Cisco, if there are alternatives available, I will never recommend Cisco or SmartNet to another client unless their post sales support gets their act together.