Users call new Oracle support portal a 'fiasco'

IDG News Service - A number of Oracle users are infuriated by reported access and performance issues with the vendor's new My Oracle Support portal, which superseded the long-standing Metalink site on Nov. 6.

Oracle has been preparing users for the transition for months, through official blog posts and notifications. But even before the Nov. 6 switchover, many decried the new portal, citing factors such as its Flash interface, which rendered it unusable at client sites that restrict the use of Flash.

In a partial concession to those complaints, Oracle recently said it would include an HTML interface for the site. However, frustrated users this week said that both versions are plagued with difficulties.

"We've been having severe problems with the new My Oracle Support all day. Sometimes we can't log in. When we can log in, we can't get an SR [service request] logged -- it errors out at various points in the process," a user calling himself "Mike" said in a post Monday to an official Oracle forum.

The user called tech support, but found no resolution there, according to the post. "The lady I spoke with about 4:45 p.m. ET told me that currently My Oracle Support was not available. I told her I was in it navigating around as we were speaking. She told me log an SR about the problem I was having logging an SR!!! ... Looks to me like Oracle needs to turn Metalink back on until 'My Oracle Support' is ready for prime time."

Other users voiced similar sentiments Monday.

"It looks like a total disaster today. I've seen all possible errors in the world: Flash screen loading up to only 90%, extremely slow when it works, back button not working. ... Hard to believe for a company that sells things like high availability and real application testing," another forum post said.

Complaints also rolled in through the Oracle-L mailing list.

"I don't know how else to put this besides fiasco -- this is totally unacceptable for a company as large at Oracle," said one list contributor. "Metalink has been effectively down for 3 days now. I have patches to download, problems to research and service requests to update. My company spends millions of dollars a year alone for Oracle Support."

Site problems continued Tuesday, according to another forum poster. "Today's MOS error is 'Unable to communicate with server -- Server Timeout. And before you say it's my Internet connection -- it isn't."

Despite complaints from users, MOS is the new reality, if an official blog post on Monday by Oracle senior customer support manager Chris Warticki is any indication.

"If you've been off the grid, or totally out of the loop and completely clueless, Classic MetaLink retired on November 6th," he wrote. "Change is here. Get in front of this one...seriously."

But in comments on Warticki's post, users said they were having trouble even accessing the site.

"Currently get message account setup is still in progress. Please come back later. Since classic Metalink retired on November 6, this is 4 days ago, and no update from Oracle on progress! Excellent work (not) -- in keeping your customers informed."

An Oracle spokeswoman couldn't immediately provide a status update on the reported problems Tuesday.