Broadcom doesn't know their own products

I'll preface this by stating we work in a smaller company and I've never dealt with VMWare licensing before, it was last renewed before I began this position. But last month, our licenses expired and we had to renew through Broadcom. We reached out to our sales partner who helped us purchase another set of 96 core licenses for a very high price, as expected. But heres' the problem. We have the licenses, but nobody knows what to do with them. And I mean nobody.

I checked our vSphere console and went under licensing, which seems like the most logical place to apply a license. I thought I would just see the expired license, and an option to enter a new license, plug it in, and see that I am compliant. But it isn't that simple. I get a message that our server is subscribed to VMware Cloud and I no longer need to add cCenter Server and ESXI host license keys.

Great, so I guess I go to the cloud then, so I go to their site, which directs me to Broadcom. I can log in and see my products and my entitlements, which shows the license keys. I see both the expired licenses and the new ones which are valid for tne next year.

So am I compliant? Do I need to do anything with them, or is everything ready to go? I ask our reseller if that is good, or if I need to do something more. They don't know, so they reach out to Broadcom on our behalf. Broadcom says the beset way to find assistance is to contact support.

So I open a case with technical support. Someone remotes in and looks at our vSphere setup and our entitlements and license keys in the Broadcom support center under entitlements. I see the license keys, I have the list of all our keys exported. All the info is there. But they don't know what to do. They direct me to open a case with non-technical support. Great - how do I do that? They don't know they're still new to VMWare. They eventually help me start a chat with their AI assistant and eventually connect to an individual.

So now technical support has passed the buck onto non-technical support and closed my case. The non-technical support rep asks questions and wants to see an example of what I am referring to. But their little chat window doesn't allow for screenshots or attachments - so how do I send them an example of what I am seeing? They don't know. They also say they are new to VMWare products and are not familiar with licensing.

They open up a new case on their end and will reach out to me later with an update.

Am I wrong to assume that someone at Broadcom should be able to look at our licensing and rather quickly say "Yeah, this looks good you're all set." or "No, you need to do this first and apply the license, then you're compliant." ?

Why is this so difficult? I get that for me it is a bit confusing as I don't do this all the time, maybe once a year if that would I ever have to think about these licneses. But a whole ass support team that deals with their product daily should be able to assist with something this basic. Maybe not though? Is applying a license really that complex?