Apparently they offer 24/7 phone and email support for Google Apps for Business customers, but I've never had any experience with it. Could someone else comment as to whether or not their Apps customer support is just as bad?
When I did get a calls back, their first questions never pertained to my problem. They were far more concerned with the state of their self-help system, and wanted to know if and how failures there led to my calling them directly.
This was a couple of years ago, and it may have gotten better since then. However, the steady drumbeat of posts like this indicates that it hasn't.
So tl;dr the phone support seems ok.
AND: You can NOT go back to the free service, at least not easily! Talk about lock-in...