Smoothwall - Complaints Phone/Contact?

[Steve21]

Morning Guys,

 

Does anyone know any senior member or complaints helpline etc for Smoothwall?

 

Honestly I'm really disappointed in them after all the good things we've heard on here, and yet our install and service has been a complete shamble.

 

Months in and we still don't have issues resolved, no-one seems to bother wanting to come back to us to ever sort it, had about 6-7 engineers looking at things and keep passing it around, and even high priority items like kids accessing adult videos through it and no-ones coming back to us...

 

If finance didn't already pay for the system without asking I'd rip the entire thing out, honestly worst company I've dealt with in the last 4 years in schools! (And that says a lot with some of the educational suppliers!)

 

Steve

[Edu-IT]

LinkedIn has a few senior people. Gavin Logan is Sales Director who might be able to help?

[Steve21]

LinkedIn has a few senior people. Gavin Logan is Sales Director who might be able to help?

 

That's a good idea! Will take a nosy

 

Thanks,

Steve

[ITBadger]

Who is your Account Manager? I've had an ongoing issue for a couple of weeks and things started to progress only when I complained to mine. There seemed to be a lot of random clicking by support engineers without a clear understanding of what they were doing, but once I complained the priority of my case was raised and they got a decent engineer onto the case.

[Steve21]

Ben seems to be the main one, but he's copied into every email and we're still having these issues.

 

Even had a group phone call with 5 of their senior bods a few weeks back, and she kicked a few people to get them looking. Yep next day people look, and then no contact since again. Gonna drop the account manager another email asking for direct contact details of the higher lot to talk directly to them I think

 

Just a complete shamble really is

 

Steve

[Opendium_Steve]

Do they not have an SLA that you can slap them around with?

[philmehew]

Smoothwall are currently working directly with the customer to collate and resolve all issues.

[the_quick]

Steve could you update us if the issue is resolved? We are looking at smoothwall and want to be sure they can sort out problems when they occur

[Steve21]

After speaking to a few managers I've got an engineer booked in to come to site to resolve all outstanding issues (Tomorrow ironically )

 

Steve

[fiza]

After speaking to a few managers I've got an engineer booked in to come to site to resolve all outstanding issues (Tomorrow ironically )

 

Steve

 

Shame you had to speak to a few managers before your issues could be resolved. We were looking at Smoothwall but I am now considering other options. With this kind of thing and their helpdesk credit system its put me right off.

[Jehanzeb]

The Company has no idea what they are doing to be honest, we had the same issue of lack of communication and then had an issue with kids able to access content then had an issue with their own certificate asking for a password that their own team didn't know about. Then they had an issue with swgfl upstream proxy and oh yes it doesn't really work with OD, well their engineer who tried to setup told they had never done it before and on every support call, they look for their help files, and guess what, the help files are outdated and doesn't contain any useful or sensible information. Their new update capris brook v5 doesn't allow you to check update history. It keep opening same window within window in a loop. That's their improvement progress.

 

Poor service

Poor customer service

Poor communication

Poor understanding of own products

Poor integration

No iPad authorisation and authentication method other than silly logins

 

Oh and don't forget they claim to be the best and # 1 web filter company in UK.

 

Other than that, it's all great.

 

Please do update us how you got on.....

Edited November 10, 2015 by witch

[Steve21]

Then they had an issue with swgfl upstream proxy and oh yes it doesn't really work with OD, well their engineer who tried to setup told they had never done it before and on every support call, they look for their help files, and guess what, the help files are outdated and doesn't contain any useful or sensible information.

 

Out of curiosity who was that engineer? Sounding familiar lol.

 

It's a shame really as had some of their guys come on to resolve an issue and do it no problem at all, but just seems once a lets say "not-so-fluent" engineer has been assigned originally to the case it seems to stick with them for months before enough complaints to get it to another one.

 

Hopefully after this engineer visit all will be shiny and work as expected, as obviously a lot of people on here said so many good things in regards to Smoothie would be nice to have that going forwards Fingers crossed!

 

Steve

Edited November 10, 2015 by witch

[Jehanzeb]

Out of curiosity who was that engineer? Sounding familiar lol

Steve

 

I am not going to name and shame publicly . Am sure they've got plenty lower end engineers or in other words trainees handling new implementations. They know little or nothing about things and until you push them you'll never get anything out.

 

I believe the company needs a real push especially with their tired old system, it needs a complete revamp and also their support services. One thing they are good at, their sales team is not 'pushy' as many others out there.

 

Regards

 

J.

Edited November 10, 2015 by witch

[Steve21]

I am not going to name and shame publicly Am sure they've got plenty lower end engineers or in other words trainees handling new implementations. They know little or nothing about things and until you push them you'll never get anything out.

 

I believe the company needs a real push especially with their tired old system, it needs a complete revamp and also their support services. One thing they are good at, their sales team is not 'pushy' as many others out there.

 

Regards

 

J.

 

Yep same one as us

 

Steve

Edited November 10, 2015 by witch

[Jehanzeb]

Yep same one as us then

 

Steve

Spot on! Well done - such an experience it was.....am glad things have sorted at your end.

 

Kindest regards

 

J.

Edited November 10, 2015 by witch

[witch]

I have modded the above posts because a personal attack is not appropriate here and unfair to the person who is named. Please keep the forum professional

[Opendium_Steve]

No iPad authorisation and authentication method other than silly logins

 

To be fair to them, iPads are an almighty pain in the backside - Apple's own applications just don't follow the standards and third party apps are just as bad. But I thought SW allowed wireless controllers to use RADIUS to avoid the authentication headaches?

 

(For what it's worth, we've settled on using RADIUS where possible, and WISPr where no suitable wifi controller is available. Although we've seen instances of Apple devices spontaneously deciding not to do the WISPr authentication - no obvious reason and of course no useful logging in iOS to explain why, it just stops happening!)

[Steve21]

I have modded the above posts because a personal attack is not appropriate here and unfair to the person who is named. Please keep the forum professional

 

While I have no issues with the initials being removed, I strongly disagree about a personal attack to inquire if two customers who have the same issues occurring happened by the same engineer or whether it's a wider issue.

 

Steve

[Dos_Box]

*Please note that whilst we do not mind you mentioning companies on here, we ask that you do not identify individuals within those companies in these forums as there may be circumstances/situations beyond their control*

[DGardiner]

i had an issue with ssl interception not being applied, their support remoted in and blocked port 443 and possibly 80(was a while ago) and it forced the traffic into the transparent proxy, no idea why this was a thing but only seemed to affect chrome

 

this was on the case notes - just incase it helps you, I can't remember where they changed it, bearing in mind - i can count on one hand how many times I've touched the firewalls config since it was delivered 4 years ago... customer did not unblock these ports... :

[TABLE=class: list, width: 700]

[TR=class: dataRow even first highlight]

[TH=class: dataCell, bgcolor: #C8D7E3]Created By:

called customer back and confirmed that he had udp ports opened for web traffic and google hangout

we have changed this to tcp, tested and confirmed that it is now working fine now

[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR=class: dataRow odd last]

[TH=class: dataCell]Created By:

issue only applying to google transparently on chrome

non transparently, and on IE, google shows certificate as being inspected

will check with customer to confirm that upd port 80 and 443 are being blocked tomorrow[/TH]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

 

quick browse makes me believe the web entry in basic services was set to udp and tcp, this was changed to tcp

my experience with them has always been positive, however id probably be as upset as yourself if this was happening to me

[DGardiner]

To be fair to them, iPads are an almighty pain in the backside - Apple's own applications just don't follow the standards and third party apps are just as bad. But I thought SW allowed wireless controllers to use RADIUS to avoid the authentication headaches?

 

(For what it's worth, we've settled on using RADIUS where possible, and WISPr where no suitable wifi controller is available. Although we've seen instances of Apple devices spontaneously deciding not to do the WISPr authentication - no obvious reason and of course no useful logging in iOS to explain why, it just stops happening!)

 

 

this is also an issue with IOS requiring a password with certs... not an issue with the certs themselves

 

linked the docs herehttp://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/158728-new-web-filter-firewall-school-5.html#post1359087

Edited November 10, 2015 by DGardiner

[Steve21]

So day 1 of resolutions/engineer work, and no engineer turns up, no emails and no phonecalls... sigh.

 

Back to Managers again.

 

Steve

[Opendium_Steve]

this is also an issue with IOS requiring a password with certs... not an issue with the certs themselves

 

This is an odd one - I've heard of this before in relation to using iOS with Smoothwall, but we have always used unpassworded certs with iOS without any problem. I wonder if it's because Smoothwall are using PKCS#12 format certificates whereas we use PEM (shouldn't make any difference but then I've stopped assuming that Apple devices will follow any kind of logic ...

[zag]

I had a similar issue with "an engineer" recently.

 

Completely useless, he was just clicking randomly on our reports not knowing what to do. The question was incredibly simple. I'm not sure what their training is like, but the support has gone down hill so badly.

 

I remember the days when someone used to log in and he could fix almost anything instantly.

 

Saying that, we had a box migration recently and that support guy was very competent.

Edited November 10, 2015 by zag

[DGardiner]

This is an odd one - I've heard of this before in relation to using iOS with Smoothwall, but we have always used unpassworded certs with iOS without any problem. I wonder if it's because Smoothwall are using PKCS#12 format certificates whereas we use PEM (shouldn't make any difference but then I've stopped assuming that Apple devices will follow any kind of logic ...

 

 

i have no idea honestly, i just looked through the documentation and copied it here. iOS is... iOS and does what it likes