Hello Cisco,

I've been a IT consultant supporting Cisco products for the last 15+ years.

As a consultant, I work with multiple clients. Those clients change frequently and if I need to open a case I go through the process/red tape and do the whole "association my Cisco ID". But that only works if I know I'll be working with them for a while and may need to call support occasionally.

There are times when I am on site or have been asked to provide technical information to a client just once and do not need to go through the whole "association my Cisco ID" while opening up a ticket.

So it looks like you've changed policies in the past few years. So now I cannot call into support with a valid serial number on a device with a Smartnet account and open a ticket with a client I am not associated with. These are usually time-sensitive issues, after hours or on weekends when the company listed contact may not be available!

Is there a way around this?

Is there a special Cisco account or ID that I can be associated with that will allow me to do that?

Can you create something, where I can go through a background check to get this access, if security is an issue?

I can not be the only one running into this brick wall.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

Thanks,

Tony Drew