How can I escalate issues in Office 365?

RussellReadI know it is extremely poor form to post unrelated questions on someone else's thread, but...  Any way you can nudge a Microsoft 365 support ticket for me?  I submitted the ticket over 3 days ago and it is still stuck at "Service Request Opened".  Today I submitted an additional ticket asking for escalation, and that one is stuck in the same place.  Ticket numbers are ‎‎2401190040012385‎ and 2401220040009816‎.  Any help appreciated.

Hello,

I just setup a client with a new Office365 and I am running into problems with inbound email bouncing.

The issue seems to be two problems.

First email are bouncing due to:

"Host or domain name not found. Name service error
    for name=XXXXXX.mail.protection.outlook.com type=AAAA: Host not
    found"

Upon further investigation it looks like XXXXXX.mail.protection.outlook.com DNS is not always resolving.
I tested this with MxToolbox.

Another bounce I'm receiving is 550 5.7.64 Relay Access Denied ATTR36.
Per Microsoft I should should only be getting this if I have connectors configured which I don't.

I have been on the phone with support for hours and so far no luck.
First I was told by support that there is an outage.
Upon looking at the health page the outage was with voicemail not email.
Then I was bounced around between a few technicians until I found one that was able to understand what I was telling them.
He confirmed that he sees the issue (the email he sent me bounced back with the "550 5.7.64 Relay Access Denied ATTR36") and will call me back but so far nothing.

Ticket# 11057754.
Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Avrom

RussellRead I'm glad you're interested in and following this and similar threads in the community.  I hope that beyond just servicing your interest you're able to share information up the line which will make positive change in the Office 365 experience for everyone.

I know this isn't an escalation forum, but I'm going to start by inviting you to review my issue anyway.  Those are #7825985,  #7644160, and #30126-6412441 (an older system I guess?).  In particularly I'll draw your attention to #7825985 and my response on 3 May 2018 at 15:41 PDT, to which I haven't had a response and don't believe I'll be receiving one.  I'm very glad if you can goose anybody on that topic.

To the more general topic: I think it's a given that Microsoft perceives little benefit, even cost savings, in providing poor service at any level, and in particular for a product that is key to their strategic plans like Office 365.   The only reason it should happen then, is because of a failure of perception, or a failure of intervention.  Here, then, for however much it helps,  is a bullet point of things I think about my O365 Support interactions in the 8 months since we migrated to O365:

• I don't think that it matters at all whether support is provided by senior VPs, 3rd party contractors in Bangladesh, or the self-aware copy of Windows 2020 running the call-center on your secret moon base.  Quality is about solving, mitigating, or at least acknowledging and documenting.
• I don't think that support technicians at any level should be allowed to close a ticket EVER without express written consent of the customer, or an override by a highly placed manager (or the moon-computer).
• It is the height of folly to believe that the same resources which try to answer a question asked by, say, my mom, are in a position to respond to any question that I could conceivably call to ask.  One of the most important tasks for support is to as quickly as possible figure if it's me or my mom on the phone and to put us together with the right team.
  
  • My mom is way more tech savvy than she'd have you believe though.
• Stubbornly soldiering on in the face of dissonance brings rapidly diminishing returns.  It doesn't matter if it's because of a communication barrier, or supporting the wrong cricket team.  Escalate or at least reassign as soon as you see it.
• Talking on the telephone is nice and immediate but I hate phones.  Bring back the "E-mail me" button, please. 
  • E-mail is self-documenting.  For phone calls you have to rely on the technician's accuracy in reporting.  When they say I'm too stupid to understand the answer they gave me, it's entirely subjective when recording the details of a phone conversation.   If we're working over e-mail the evidence is right there in print.

Hi Mark,

The best way to escalate is if you have Premier Support or through a Partner that have Premier.

If you do not have it, Phone to them and explain that situation.

Just ask the agent to escalate, if he gives you grief demand to speak with manager.

I've probably had a couple dozen tickets over the years, but there was one that I finally got frustrated and demanded to speak to the supervisor. It did get a little better action on their end and actually eventually ended up with a different tech that eventually led to a solution.

Not saying you'll have the same experience.