Smoothwall - Complaints Phone/Contact?

[Jehanzeb]

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

 

Please accept apologies, never intended to naming and shaming anyone 'personally' - the difference and frustration is professionally based, and not personal. It wasn't intended nor would ever be intended to personally target someone. Nevertheless, I also sympathize with the frustration people get from Companies, it not employee's fault, Companies should provide adequate training over and above their greed. We're in Education, we strongly believe in education (respecting people is one of the factors of education), and educating people. Remember, making mistakes is natural but someone somewhere should rectify them with responsibility.

[Jehanzeb]

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

 

Back to Managers again.

 

Steve

 

I hope they are not counting your credits. What seems to be the problem as in how much has been rectified and what's left? We might be able to help, crowd sourcing is powerful you know

 

Regards

 

J.

[Jehanzeb]

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

 

Well you have a cert that doesn't have a password, worst you didn't know there was a blank password and when the customer called you, you tried all sorts of a passwords that you knew or taken from the sticky notes on your computer screen, you even tried your colleagues who told you more passwords to try until you asked 2nd line guy to re create a cert with a sensible password and everything seemed to be working fine. Not to say, you didn't fix the system, you just emailed your customer with a new cert file, system issue remains where it was - a nice workaround and a quick fix, but not a Solution oh and you boast about you being the best and number 1 in UK schools (how....???) no one seemed to ask you that question.

 

Regards

 

J.

[caffrey]

The support ticket thing is weird, I just used two over relatively minor issues due to new features and confusing interface, one of the problems I ended up resolving myself (Admittedly it was in the documentation) which first line support couldn't fix and escalated it (They never checked the documentation either)

[mmarks_SW]

I appreciate the moderators removing individual names. I really don't think it is in anybodies interest to start posting engineers details if you are disappointed with the service you were given. None of our engineers are juniors. Newer staff are always shadowed until they are confident and knowledgeable and have the support of the entire team behind them should they encounter a situation that they are not equipped to handle.

 

Far more constructive to inform the people that can take your comments/criticisms on board and make a difference. I have always openly offered my own contact details to this forum and those of my management. If we are aware of a problem, no matter how small, we will endeavour to resolve it. That's our job and we take it seriously.

 

Do bear in mind that, as with any forum, it is unlikely to read a post containing 'used a product today and it worked fine, just like it did yesterday'. That's not intended to belittle anybodies experience that wasn't up to scratch, just a fact that forums are used as a place to highlight problems and vent frustration.

 

Our Head of Service Support can be contacted on [email protected] for support concerns, our Head of Solutions can be contacted on [email protected] for implementation concerns and if you are not satisfied with the response received, I welcome you contacting myself at [email protected]. My first port of call will always be to discuss with my management team first so please make use of them if you need to.

 

Michael Marks

Operations Director

Smoothwall Ltd.

[Steve21]

Morning Michael,

 

While I appreciate what you're saying I feel some major parts are being missed out in this.

 

I appreciate the moderators removing individual names. I really don't think it is in anybodies interest to start posting engineers details if you are disappointed with the service you were given. None of our engineers are juniors. Newer staff are always shadowed until they are confident and knowledgeable and have the support of the entire team behind them should they encounter a situation that they are not equipped to handle.

 

It was your engineers who told us you have people installing Smoothwalls who had never done it over Summer as you were so busy, and this was what was leading to the delay in any resolution in our problems.

 

And no names were published, the initials were and if two sites have the same problems occurring from the same engineer I feel that says something in regards to the issue.

 

This or any other complaint was never passed upstream until we constantly complain at every level, as "the engineer" was busy, couldn't come back for a while, needs to research, doing other sites etc.

 

Far more constructive to inform the people that can take your comments/criticisms on board and make a difference. I have always openly offered my own contact details to this forum and those of my management. If we are aware of a problem, no matter how small, we will endeavour to resolve it. That's our job and we take it seriously.

 

Account managers and higher management were all contacted in regards to this, and it's still outstanding. The only time it looks like it might finally get resolved is when we contacted you directly and we only knew of your email address from a random survey email.

 

Do bear in mind that, as with any forum, it is unlikely to read a post containing 'used a product today and it worked fine, just like it did yesterday'. That's not intended to belittle anybodies experience that wasn't up to scratch, just a fact that forums are used as a place to highlight problems and vent frustration.

 

Again our support tickets get closed as "the implementation team" is dealing with it, and we go around in circles.

 

Our Head of Service Support can be contacted on [email protected] for support concerns, our Head of Solutions can be contacted on [email protected] for implementation concerns and if you are not satisfied with the response received, I welcome you contacting myself at [email protected]. My first port of call will always be to discuss with my management team first so please make use of them if you need to.

 

Michael Marks

Operations Director

Smoothwall Ltd.

 

And again the only time we found these emails/contacts was from ringing up and complaining/emailing directly. Would be nice to have these up somewhere that people can access directly in the first place.

 

And again an example yesterday, when our engineer was coming to fix the problems, and no-one turned up. Leading us to email the above names and find out it's different days arranged after planning downtime etc.

 

Hopefully all goes well today and this can be resolved finally

 

Thanks,

Steve

[the_quick]

Hi Steve, sorry to nag, but any updates? Has it been resolved?

[Steve21]

Still on going overall.

 

Had the engineer out as mentioned some of the bits were fixed while he was here, which is good no issue at all with that part.

 

However some parts apparently "sales don't know what they're talking about" and Smoothwall can't actually do this for us even though this was checked pre-purchase (Disclaimer - My paraphrase it wasn't put in that phrase) - Has been raised for development but obviously doesn't help us currently. An example being unable to log IPs going through Reverse Proxy, so if you have someone trying to log in to a service with other usernames you have no idea who it is, as it's all showing up as the Smoothwalls IP. Our 10 year old ISA could do this and was told we could on Smoothwall.

 

And currently in testing/working with the engineer in regards to fixing the authentication script so it'll actually work in our scenario without having to reconfigure all our wireless/network settings etc (Like changing over to Radius, or disabling user switching etc)

 

Steve

[discoveranother]

I experienced this last year with Smoothwall. Their support was and still is pathetic. After hearing so much hype from people I know that Smoothwall is the way to go, I had a nightmare with them. I had several installations of Smoothwall last year, had different engineers I was in contact with over the phone, one saying this should be set up like this and another that should be setup like that. When I desperately needed assistance after the installations and customers were in a complete mess with them, their help was diabolical. Didn't want to know. Still finding over a year on not much has changed. They put us through so much stress and aggravation we nearly lost customers because of them. It was a horrid time. We won't be renewing with them once the contract expires. Glad I have noticed some of the comments on Edugeek, as at first I thought it was just our lack of understanding and knowledge, but realise now many others have and are still having similar experiences. Once you buy into their contracts they don't want to know.