I know posting here doesn't guarantee an answer, But I wouldn't need to if I could ever get to speak to an engineer on the European platinum support line, they only ever correspond by email and just leave certain questions unanswered see point 2 in that thread "I will ask our development"
I know Tom is one of the developers and the information/feedback should come up the chain to him from support and then back to me via support, but it just isn't.
Gert/Barry Butler/ Jack D/ I have tried talking to all of you but none of you have got back to me on why the European support is not functioning properly.
It doesn't matter how great the product is, if I can't get the support in times of need, and provide answers to when issues are going to be resolved, then my boss will force me to dump astaro's products in favour of a supplier that will truly provide 24/7 support on the end of a phone.
I am interested in other people experiences, is it this bad in america now as well, the last time I called them 2 weeks ago, I held for 20 minutes and got through to a trainee who could not find my support call at all, despite giving him the reference number and he was unable to pass me to anyone who could help.
Please respond astaro, I don't want to be forced to another supplier.
My experience with calling for support was negative the first time I did that, so I griped to the engineer, telling him I knew it wasn't his fault. He told me that the fastest/easiest way to get assistance was to login to MyAstaro and submit a ticket.
My experience is that I get competent support, and that my clients' needs are handled as quickly and efficiently as IBM, HP, Microsoft, etc.
If there's one thing Astaro could do differently, it would be to pay more attention to the customer service (sales) skills of the engineers. They are much better than average, but that's because Astaro picks good people.
For instance, the poor guy in the thread nathanlock just referred to above; he should have been told that his hardware wasn't powerful enough to handle all the new capabilities of V7. As it was, the guy was given the impression that the engineers didn't want to talk to him because they only wanted to rig a work-around and move on.
The engineers might feel like that's unfair of the customer, but the customer's impression is always the one that matters to the customer!
Cheers - Bob
Sophos UTM Community Moderator Sophos Certified Architect - UTM Sophos Certified Engineer - XG Gold Solution Partner since 2005
It feels to me that astaro just want to bury their head in the sand about this one, no comments still. Perhaps I am on everyone's ignore list & labelled as a moaner.
But before you label me as a moaner consider this:-
You try explaining to your bosses when the firewall isn't working, "oh its all right I know you can't get any/some emails but I have left a voicemail on their platinum support line, and I will get an email sent to me some time in the next 4 hours from them, that I won't be able to read because my email isn't working!"
You try explaining to the auditors, why astaro support just logged on to your firewall at random, with not so much as a phone call and started changing things on the company firewall without obtaining authorisation first.
Does Astaro understand that good support is a major factor in product selection?
As I said before if I cannot get this resolved with Astaro, then I will be forced to replace them with someone elses product by my bosses.
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