Horrible Apple Support - Exchange may be broken, but nobody listens!

Question

I have a support case open with Apple, but they are absolutely useless. I got past first line support in a day (despite the promised callback that never happened). Second line support took about an hour, but the Enterprise support person refused to talk to me until I got my exchange admin on the phone. Is this even realistic? I work for a large company, with exchange servers all over the world. There is no one exchange admin, but they would not listen. I finally got somebody on the phone and we had a conference call.
My issue is basically:
 Iphone 3g, pushes email while turned on, and while plugged in. It will continue to push email in sleep mode for a few minutes if unplugged. After a few minutes, push just stops working until the device is powered on again. At this point, all the backlogged mail comes streaming through.
 To troubleshoot, I’ve tried restoring (without backup), resetting my exchange account info, using a different exchange provider (mail2web), turning the 3g and wifi radios off. All have these have not led to success. I’ve also moved mailboxes to a different exchange server, and removed my mobile profile via OWA.
 However, when using a borrowed first gen iphone, everything works fine. I do not have another 3g phone to test with.
I explained this to enterprise support but they said they would go away and forward this around internally. However, I may have to pay for support from here on. I just want to talk shop with somebody about the issue. I am familiar with activesync, both from a user and vendor perspective. My WM5/6 phones have pushed mail for about 2 years perfectly fine. I also supported Activesync when at Microsoft. However, Apple seems completely clueless and unwilling to listen.
The issue is exactly the same as described here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=332362&page=4
With the HTC device, a regkey setting fixed it, but how the heck can this be fixed via Apple’s implementation? Nobody technical at Apple is willing to even listen, and the consumer people are polite enough, but this is way over their head.
Where to go next?!
N.

Answer 1

Just a thought . . .
You are experiencing issues with Microsoft Exchange?
Why shout at Apple? Could there be an issue with the software Microsoft have written for the iPhone platform?
I used to have a .Mac account, which they upgraded to a MobileMe account. I have absolutely no problems with Push (other than it running the battery down a tad quickly).
I know they are different (although in principal they are the same) but what struck me reading your post was the nostalgia. . .I remembered back to the days of using Windows PC's where one software vendor would say "ah that's a Windows problem, contact Microsoft" you then contact Microsoft to be told "is it a third party application? You need to contact that software vendor", getting you absolutely nowhere near a fix for the problem.
The push facility works fine with Apple's MobileMe and iPhone 3G. The problem you have appears to be in Exchange. This is made by Microsoft for the iPhone. Try contacting Microsoft to see if they are aware of any issues