I pay a ridiculously small $100/month for AWS support and they get the job done however I want it (chat, voice, email) at any hour of the day. I basically signed up for it so I'd have someone to blame if something went wrong, but they resolve every single issue to my satisfaction.
I don't think it's that small, it 10% of your bill for business support. ($100 if you are spending less that $1k).
And the support is ok sometimes. But when you actually discover an issue on their end they constantly try and flog you off, and then don't get back to you for ages.
I've yet to replicate that latter observation, having worked with AWS as an individual, part of a small company, and (currently) part of a recently-unicorn-statused startup. AWS support has always been pretty acutely responsive. This is obviously better if your company's big enough to shell out for enterprise support, but even the middle support tier (the one presumably being discussed here) ain't bad at all.
I used to use the free tier for the 1 year period, turned everything off, and have an alert set to go off at 1 penny of spend. Even with a lifetime spend of <$1 I still get to talk to real people for support at AWS.
Most of these companies are super powers with blatant disregard for humanity. When it comes to the good in your life, the things around you; opportunities, options, community health... they are slowly but surely drinking your milkshake.
I got hooked on Unix when as a dev/DBA I inherited Solaris administration that I wasn't really qualified for. Sun support bootstrapped my skills and taught me alot. In another gig I had similar experiences with IBM.
It contrasted heavily against Microsoft, where even the $$$ Premier offerings are pretty awful, with lots of ridiculous hoops between you and super-skilled SEs.
Companies may suck or not, but that doesn't mean their support organization sucks.
On the contrary, if you find a company with a policy of gaining maximum market share through time on a break-even cost structure, and if the market is very big, you can essentially ride “at cost” through the entire growth/capture era.
If you notice, since inception AWS consistently returns its economies of scale as pricing drops to customers, allowing AWS to capture more market share.
They’re drinking the milkshake of incumbent IT, and you can benefit like a remora riding a shark.
