I personally hate 'using' tickets, I think the response time is just far to long. I know they probably have a huge amount of tickets to respond to, but hey hire more staff...

Often I 'have' to open a ticket to see why my website is down, and waiting for a response for two hours just really doesn't help get my site back up does it!
Also the time difference is a nightmare, I am one for Live Support! My current host, recently removed that feature and I am very disappointed.