SonicWall 24×7 Support Not There After Hours

Most of us would assume that 24×7 support means that someone is there to take your call anytime day or night. But one reader has discovered that when it comes to SonicWall’s e-mail security appliances, 24×7 is more like 12×5.

“When is 24x7x365 support not 24x7x365 support?” the reader wrote. “Easy, buy the SonicWall ES200 e-mail security device and a SonicWall Dynamic Support 24×7 service contract. Their idea of support is Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM EST to 9:00 PM EST and on a callback basis. When I spoke with my sales rep he assured me I was wrong about this, but every time I get through to India or wait for them to call me back — sometimes up to 72 hours later — they assure me there is no one on site to take a call on the weekends or anytime not during those hours.”

As the reader continued to have intermittent problems that required support, he spoke to a SonicWall representative at a tradeshow. “He e-mailed me back with a response from the director of technical support: ‘Currently there is an on-call engineer to handle the after hours and weekend calls and additional head count is being hired to move from on-call to in-house support for after hours and weekend support.’ I then received a call from another official at SonicWall who acknowledged that the 24×7 support for the e-mail security product is not what it’s supposed to be.”

Indeed, how does having an “on-call” technician who may not actually call back for several days quality as 24×7 support? The reader was particularly disappointed by this because he had previously had very good support experiences with other SonicWall products. “I purchased this device because I was happy with the support from India for the SonicWall firewalls that really is 24×7,” the reader wrote. “But the SonicWall e-mail security sales people are selling a service they clearly do not provide.”

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