4 ms·

I just don't get why their support always leaves our company hanging, is this a strategy to success? We want to renew our license for a lower amount of people

I just don't get why their support always leaves our company hanging, is this a strategy to success? We want to renew our license for a lower amount of people as last year and that seems to be a major issue, as we won't get responses from renewals@gitlab.com and our Technical Account Manager, after giving us directions that simply did not work stopped responding last week. Friday our license will expire if we don't pony up for nearly twice the amount of seats than we actually need. The last time I complained here someone bumped up our tickets but we still had to resolve the technical issue ourselves as the only option was to setup the instance differently, which an easy response from a support agent could have told us without a multi week delay. I love the product, but have stopped recommending GitLab to anyone above a 10 people org for those reasons.

lkozloff 7y ago
Hi @Roritharr - Support Manager here. It was me who helped your tickets along last time, and I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble again. Someone should be in touch on your renewals issue soon. If you're interested in the story; there's a bit of nuance here. Support actually falls under Engineering in GitLab, and licensing falls under Sales. That means that technical issues and upgrades/renewals fall under different teams. The good news is that we're working hard in both areas to improve. - We've significantly increased the headcount of the licensing team, this should mean faster responses on licensing queries in the near term future. - We've formed a Fulfillment team who is hard at work automating away some of the manual process associated with renewals. (You can see their priorities here: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/fulfillment/#-current-focus https://about.gitlab.com/direction/fulfillment/#-current-foc...) Specifically from the Support side, we're discussing process improvements that will mean fewer languishing tickets like you've described. There are a few in flight, but the one I'm personally most excited about is https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/support-team-meta/issues/1771 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/support-team-meta/issu.... You'll note, I did just write it up - so there's not much discussion there yet. If you're feeling up for it, we'd love to have your input. Feel free to leave a comment there if you have any colour that could help. I hope next time we bump into each other on HN it'll be under happier circumstances. As always, if you'd like to discuss this more, feel free to email me directly at lyle[at]gitlab[dot]com.
- Roritharr 7y ago
  Hi, thanks for your response. I'd love to know if our problem is technical or not, as either we're misunderstanding the true-up licensing model or the user limit counting is faulty. We're coming from a 30 Users License last year, with two true-up on-top of that. Now we're down to 17 active users, so after our TAMs reply we bought a License with 19 Users. When trying to add the License we're getting an error that in the Last year 30 users have been active so we need to renew for this amount... Is this a bug?
  - Roritharr 7y ago
    For future reference: Indeed it was a bug before v12. GitLab was able to provide me with a License File which worked on our version 11.10.6-ee Installation before our time ran out.
Cyranix 7y ago
Not exactly the same scenario, but my little company (barely over 10 people) decided to splurge on GitLab Silver, and it was a royal pain for someone on GitLab's side to get in touch with us and take our money, even though we've already been a lower-tier customer for a while. The UX isn't as polished as GitHub's, but I can live with it. The billing system, on the other hand, seems to be rather dreadful.

lkozloff 7y ago

Hi @Roritharr - Support Manager here. It was me who helped your tickets along last time, and I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble again. Someone should be in touch on your renewals issue soon. If you're interested in the story; there's a bit of nuance here. Support actually falls under Engineering in GitLab, and licensing falls under Sales. That means that technical issues and upgrades/renewals fall under different teams. The good news is that we're working hard in both areas to improve. - We've significantly increased the headcount of the licensing team, this should mean faster responses on licensing queries in the near term future. - We've formed a Fulfillment team who is hard at work automating away some of the manual process associated with renewals. (You can see their priorities here: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/fulfillment/#-current-focus https://about.gitlab.com/direction/fulfillment/#-current-foc...) Specifically from the Support side, we're discussing process improvements that will mean fewer languishing tickets like you've described. There are a few in flight, but the one I'm personally most excited about is https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/support-team-meta/issues/1771 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support/support-team-meta/issu.... You'll note, I did just write it up - so there's not much discussion there yet. If you're feeling up for it, we'd love to have your input. Feel free to leave a comment there if you have any colour that could help. I hope next time we bump into each other on HN it'll be under happier circumstances. As always, if you'd like to discuss this more, feel free to email me directly at lyle[at]gitlab[dot]com.

Roritharr 7y ago
Hi, thanks for your response. I'd love to know if our problem is technical or not, as either we're misunderstanding the true-up licensing model or the user limit counting is faulty. We're coming from a 30 Users License last year, with two true-up on-top of that. Now we're down to 17 active users, so after our TAMs reply we bought a License with 19 Users. When trying to add the License we're getting an error that in the Last year 30 users have been active so we need to renew for this amount... Is this a bug?
- Roritharr 7y ago
  For future reference: Indeed it was a bug before v12. GitLab was able to provide me with a License File which worked on our version 11.10.6-ee Installation before our time ran out.

Cyranix 7y ago

Not exactly the same scenario, but my little company (barely over 10 people) decided to splurge on GitLab Silver, and it was a royal pain for someone on GitLab's side to get in touch with us and take our money, even though we've already been a lower-tier customer for a while. The UX isn't as polished as GitHub's, but I can live with it. The billing system, on the other hand, seems to be rather dreadful.