Raising Customer Messages with SAP OSS on BCS issues

Question

Hi guys,
I'd be keen to know everyone's opinion on raising customer messages with SAP OSS, in particular on BCS.
Often I find that my colleagues are hesitant to raise a note with SAP because they think it either takes too long or they don't get a satisfactory answer.
Whereas as soon as I see something fishy, that I cannot explain I will check my logic once more, check on SDN, check existing OSS notes, then raise a Customer Message immediately (while I continue to investigate/test).
This is partly due to my experience that half the time I feel like a guinea pig in BCS, perhaps because BCS is not as widespread as other modules and i may be the first to try something so may be first to experience the problem.
The first line response (often from Shanghai) usually tries to send the message straight back but I find with a little persistence, clear (and irrefutable) documentation , you soon get through to the experts in Germany (or is it Czech Rep?) who actually understand the issue.
The client has paid a lot of money for the service through their SAP licensing and maintenance fees, so I have no qualms about 'reporting a product error' when I see one.
Also, I find a lot of BCS documentation is out of date, not updated as new releases/EHPs come out, eg I recently relied on the contents of OSS note 936590, which was wrong for BCS 604. So I raised a customer message and requested that they update it, which has now been done - this is too late for me but might help someone else.
Raising a Customer Message with OSS is not an excuse to avoid doing your job, but where there is a genuine error in BCS, I encourage others to raise OSS notes and persis with them until a satisfatcory response is received.

Answer 1

Concur with TheScotsman.
The situation is almost the same: the 1st line support (India) very often beat back the costomer message without going deep into the problem. However, if we persist and provide additional details (or when the message was made very professionally and bypassed the 1st line) the message was rerouted to consultants from Czeck Rep.). In this case the progress was significant. Since the client do not provide access to the system, in a couple of times we made a remote session: the support guy gave directions what to do in the system and where to look for some details. The problems were solved in a half an hour.