Arduino don't seem to provide any support, enthusiasts do
You know, it's vaguely possible that SmartProjects could have spun things like:
"We're really concerned that Arduino LLC's desire to use third-party manufacturers will reduce quality and increase support burden, and we all know that their support is pretty minimal anyway, compared to that provided by the community at large. So we have decided to form a new corporation focusing on selling well-supported boards. Here's our new ordering site, and here's a new forum site where we've added "Official Support" topics in addition to the usual. I'm also pleased to announce that we've reached financial arrangements with the following well-known community members to activity monitor these new topics, so that questions will be answered in a timely manner, so so that we have a motivated source for bug fixes and improvements."
But they didn't even try, so it's hard for me to see them as anything other than greedy
Right now it's "buy our products, go over there for support." Grr.