I am a google apps paying customer and it took them 4 weeks to get my domain issue corrected ! In that time i wasnt able to get mail so i had to change my mail to use godaddy until they got back to me. When they finally did they said it was because my dns records were pointing to godaddy ! After 1 week of not getting mails i would say an alternative is required. I actually had a feeling that this would happen :)

I really love google as a company, their products, api's, their talks and all the events they hold are so great, i have learnt alot, BUT man, when i couldn't access my mail as a paying customer and got the runaround for support for 4 weeks even though they said it was high on the priority list ... GRRR thinking about it just makes me mad.

Anyway on a good note, after this issue everything is working fine and i guess aslong as you dont need support then everything is good :)