Said It Here

How to find reliable on-demand onsite IT support

Relying on a mix of random contractors for occasional onsite IT help leads to wildly inconsistent service quality, unfamiliar technicians, and unexpected extra charges. This makes it nearly impossible to get reliable "hands and feet" support across multiple offices without constantly dealing with mixed results and inflated costs.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Using a mix of different local vendors for occasional onsite support
  2. 2
    Sending someone traveling in from another city or country
  3. 3
    making a list of complaints about the old provider and shopping around
  4. 4
    investing in professional training to manage endpoints internally instead of using an MSP

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/sysadmin3 people · September 2026

“We've been using a mix of different vendors for the occasional onsite support we need (desktop issues, hardware swaps, meeting room/AV problems, etc.), but we've had pretty mixed results.”source ↗

“Sometimes the person is great, sometimes we're dealing with someone traveling in from another city or country who isn't very familiar with the environment.”source ↗

“I'm trying to figure out if there's a better way to handle this — ideally a company that can provide reliable onsite "hands and feet" support when we need someone physically in an office, rather than finding a different contractor for each job.”source ↗

ggiijjeeww · r/sysadmin · 16 upvotes

“They still piled on extra charges under the guise of out of scope support (which it was, technically, but that doesn't mean not expensive), and their support was still very much "best effort,"”source ↗

ncc74656m · r/sysadmin · 1 upvotes

“I have yet to meet an MSP that lives up to its hype. Sorry, i got nothing.”source ↗

The_NorthernLight · r/sysadmin · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

r/sysadmininfrastructureit managementoutsourcingremote supportvendor management

People with this problem also raised