Abysmal customer support/technical support....

ratherman

I recently purchase (6) nsa2700's [(3) 2700's & (3) HA pairs] to replace our tz670's. Installed the first pair with no issues. Shipped another pair to a remote site and flew there to install. Here is where the problems started:

1.) The primary showed a yellow light on the 2nd power supply (no second power supply installed).
2.) Reached out to tech support and they indicated they would send me an RMA next business day. This was on a Tuesday night at 5:30 CDT. I indicated I was on site a limited time and needed it ASAP.
3.) Received an email (10.35AM) that RMA was approved on Wednesday, but RMA unit was not picked up by UPS until 5:39pm Wednesday night.
4.) Item was never received on Thursday due to what UPS called 'Global weather event'.
5.) Item was never received on Friday due to what UPS called 'Global weather event. I had to leave the site on Saturday (unit finally received on following Monday)

Multiple calls to my salesperson at Firewalls.com during this time period - they tried to reach out to their SonicWALL sales rep, but calls were never returned (from SonicWALL).

Multiple calls to SonicWALL tech support were not helpful - they just indicated that it was in the hands of the carrier at this point. No offer to help, no offer to send another unit from a different location - nothing - very poor communication.

When they shipped the RMA unit - they automatically remove the old unit (which I was still using until the replacement was to arrive) from MYSONICWALL without telling me - that caused several problems - 1.) lost my Capture Client licenses that were attached to that unit which caused errors on all of my clients. Also, was not able to complete the secure transfer upgrade from my tz670 as that was associated with the 2700 they removed from MYSONICWALL (even after they reinstated it).

Throughout this mess, I had multiple calls to tech support to get the licenses straighten out and to get my original unit reinstated - the communication gap in talking with first level support is a nightmare. You can't understand 90% of what they are saying, and their knowledge level is not what it should be. I talked with a service manager on Friday - they indicated the SonicWALL sales rep would reach out to me to see how they could make this right - never received that callback.

The RMA unit will now probably sit there until December when I can get back on site. The concern is not about receiving a bad unit - that can happen to any company - it is how a company deals with a problem. Dealing with companies like FedEx/UPS and weather-related delays is another problem - but that still does not change how SonicWALL treated me as a customer in this situation. There are several points that can be learned with how this was handled and how they could provide better customer service.