IMO the technical support provided by many of the uController manufacturers has really declined over the past 10-15 years. In the good old days you could call a number, get an actual person on the phone that understood the product and get your question answered quickly so you could move on with your project.
I recently did a couple of small projects using Atmel parts and the technical support was beyond bad. I decided to try these parts because the technical support from Microchip was not what it used to be.
I have always had good to great support from LT, AD and usually from TI for their analog and DSP products.
So what manufacturers have you had good support experiences with for low cost $5-10 uControllers?