Not our experience, certainly not outside of working hours, refusal to escalate until level 3 staff return working hours, which on a weekend is a lot of downtime

Which product is that?

Sorry, the context here is Microsoft Exchange, which is what the parent is talking about.

Outside of incredibly expensive corporate contracts does Microsoft actually support their products? That would honestly be news to me.

If you want support for their software in production, get ready to pay for it, and generally, it's great.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/gp/support-options-for-b...

Professional Support Single Incident $499 USD for one incident

Professional Support 5-Pack $1999 USD for five incidents

500 for a single incident seems pretty expensive...

Usually when you buy a product the company supports it without additional fees.

Most of these credits are rolled into your licensing agreement, even with a $20k/year SME open value I recall us getting like 4 tickets free. They aren't just tickets, at 4am in the morning with a botched Exchange upgrade (it was our fault in the end we overlooked something with certs) you have a case manager on the phone (calling you back and a direct number to him/her) then they forward you as required, you end up essentially talking to one of Exchange developers if required. The escalation path, speed, and knowledge are seriously awesome.

Yes, I have a 1-account Exchange Online contract and the support is quite good.