When I was a fresh grad, I spent 8 months on the phones for a company which provided an outsourced helpdesk solution to about 60 clients. Of those 60, I was supporting 8 at once. Our motto (among the grunts) was:

We're always the last to know.

We'd get calls from about 10 people saying the network was down, or such and such a system wasn't available so we'd follow procedure and escalate it to a severity 1 incident... only to get berated by the company's management and I.T. staff because it was a planned outtage. Nobody told us.

My point, having been in those same foul smelling trenches, is that management is to blame. The same management that you'll never get to speak to no matter how much you try to escalate your call.

If they deviate from their orders too much they'll get fired... and I'm siding with them, your hardware isn't worth their job. If it makes one feel better screaming and yelling at the buffer that management placed between them and the product, go for it... but one probably likes kicking puppies too.