Ask Slashdot: Dealing With an Unresponsive Manufacturer Who Doesn't Fix Bugs? 204
moofo writes: I've had huge problems with a security appliance since its installation. Specifically, the VPN SSL client is causing a problem for the majority of my remote clients. The company acknowledged the bug, but they are jerking me around, and no resolution is in sight. I tried third-party clients, but I'm wary of using them since they are not distributed by the manufacturer, and they require some maintenance to keep working properly.
I also talked to various executives at the company and besides giving me apologies, nothing good is coming my way. It's been more than two years (on a three-year subscription that I can't terminate early), and this is continually causing me trouble and aggravation. It also makes my internal customers unhappy. How do you deal with a manufacturer who doesn't fix bugs in a reasonable time frame?
I also talked to various executives at the company and besides giving me apologies, nothing good is coming my way. It's been more than two years (on a three-year subscription that I can't terminate early), and this is continually causing me trouble and aggravation. It also makes my internal customers unhappy. How do you deal with a manufacturer who doesn't fix bugs in a reasonable time frame?
The name (Score:5, Interesting)
One way is to give the public the name!
Re:The name (Score:4, Informative)
One way is to give the public the name!
This is a VERY good suggestion. Why is the company not being named? If the company sees their name being publicly dragged through the mud, they are likely to make customer service a higher priority. Public reviews and customer-to-customer communication facilitated by Amazon, eBay, etc. have done wonders for customer service.
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Problem is that a lot of vendors will immediately turn around and sue for libel/slander, as in the case of places that got one star reviews on websites, and part of the injunctive relief asked is to retract all statements, true or no.
Of course, here in the US, the truth is a defense... but realistically, legal cases tend to be won by who has the deeper pockets.
So, not naming a vendor right off is a wise thing. They can easily retaliate (such as the business who got someone terminated) in other ways.
Re:The name (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is that a lot of vendors will immediately turn around and sue for libel/slander
In America, the truth is an absolute defense against libel/slander. As long as you have documented your accusations, you have little to worry about. Anyway, good luck serving "moofo" with a subpoena.
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Well, other than being bankrupted before the judge is ready to rule on the issue...
Re:The name (Score:5, Insightful)
I am impressed, I thought I had seen some bad legal advice before, but this is spectacular.
I am sure the vexatious litigants of the world greatly appreciate your suggestion that their victims lose on technicalities because they didn't correctly understand the legal process.
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victims lose on technicalities because they didn't correctly understand the legal process.
Can you cite a single case of a libel case in America lost by a defendant, that spoke the truth, on a "technicality"? If you have a working brain, and understand basic things like filing deadlines, and how to fill out forms, then you do not need a lawyer to defend yourself in a routine lawsuit. If you are willing to do some online research, you can even be your own plaintiff, although I would not recommend that for a first timer. It is common for technicalities to result in a case being thrown out (the d
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Lost? Probably not many, because a lot (if not most) settle before it gets to that point. The problem is that a plaintiff with money can keep you buried under motion after motion, which costs a lot of time to answer, and that's time not spent on your business. Look at how much SCO cost IBM for their little adventure, even though SCO really didn't have any technical merits to their suit
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I would imagine that such cases - at least when lost - involve enough nondisclosure clauses to make information practically unavailable.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Court documents are public records. Anyone can look at them, for any reason, or for no reason. Many of them are searchable on the internet. The rare exceptions are for cases involving minors, some sex crimes, and some family law cases, where the judge rules that there is a compelling state interest in sealing the documents. There is no way this would ever happen in a libel case between adults.
A man who defends himself has a fool for a client (Score:4, Informative)
In a civil lawsuit, all the filing costs are paid by the plaintiff, not the defendant.
Filing costs maybe but not lawyers fees which always account for the bulk of the cost of any lawsuit aside from any adverse judgements. Filing costs are a rounding error.
If you know you spoke the truth, and you have solid evidence to back that up, then you really don't need a lawyer.
HAHAHAHAHAHA... If you believe that you are an idiot and have never been on the pointy end of an actual lawsuit. This isn't an episode of Judge Judy we are talking about here.
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Does that saying apply to lawyers too if they get sued? Maybe they would end up making stupid mistakes because of the emotional involvement?
Lawyers do seem pretty good at the job security game: make the system very complicated and convince everyone they need lawyers. Software houses should keep this in mind and not try to focus on ease of use. :-)
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If you believe that you are an idiot and have never been on the pointy end of an actual lawsuit.
I may be an idiot, but after 30 years in the software business, I have been involved in many lawsuits. Most were about IP law, but some involved employment, and contract law. I used a lawyer when I was the plaintiff, and I used a lawyer if the case was complex and the stakes were high. But for routine stuff, I represented myself. In more than a dozen instances, I only lost once, which was an employment case. I fired a guy for stealing money from a postage meter, and refused to pay him severance since i
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In a civil lawsuit, all the filing costs are paid by the plaintiff, not the defendant. If you know you spoke the truth, and you have solid evidence to back that up, then you really don't need a lawyer. So your monetary costs are this much: $0. Discovery can be time consuming if you are disorganized, but if you already have your evidence documented, as you should have before mouthing off, then it will be no big deal. No more than a few hours.
This is the funniest thing I've read in a long time.
I was the defendant ("respondent", actually) in a civil suit. My legal fees exceeded $6,000.
Never go to court without a lawyer unless you've decided that you want to lose.
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My legal fees exceeded $6,000.
Never go to court without a lawyer unless you've decided that you want to lose.
So your point is that you spent a lot of money on a lawyer, and therefore using a lawyer is a good idea?
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I am reminded of something my accountant friend always tells me: I don't do magic.
Lawyers and accountants are highly trained individuals with a great deal of knowledge. They know a lot of things that you don't know.
However, you probably aren't going to fail an audit just because you didn't use an accountant, as long as you have some idea of how finance works.
Similarly, you aren't going to lose a court case because you don't have a lawyer. An entity can sue you for any reason, however if their claim is entir
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The summary gives some information about moofo:
"I also talked to various executives at the company and besides giving me apologies, nothing good is coming my way. It's been more than two years (on a three-year subscription that I can't terminate early)"
How many customers do you think have spoken to multiple executives at the security company? That may narrow down the number of people who could be moofo. [Assuming moofo is telling the truth about that; it could have been a misdirection.] The duration and ter
Going out of business being right (Score:3)
In America, the truth is an absolute defense against libel/slander. As long as you have documented your accusations, you have little to worry about.
Except for perhaps going bankrupt defending yourself. Being right isn't worth much if you get put out of business proving that fact. Accusing a large company with flesh eating lawyers of anything publicly can result in a very costly lawsuit regardless of the merits of the case.
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What's even more fun is if you do win, and then *they* BK on you. Then you're on the hook for more time and money trying to collect on a judgment that you quite possibly won't see a penny of.
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Re:The name (Score:4, Interesting)
Full disclosure: we own some of those and have several very similar issues with their support offerings, so the OP's complaint definitely resonates.
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I'd have hoped that most "appliances" are just silly to make and use these days, what with virtualization etc. You should be buying a vm image, not a piece of hardware.
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Unless you're trying to do something like put an IPMI port behind a firewall. A VM running on the machine to be protected won't be of much use there.
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You should be buying a vm image, not a piece of hardware. Unless you're trying to do something like put an IPMI port behind a firewall. A VM running on the machine to be protected won't be of much use there.
Yeah, well, some people can't see outside their little box. To be fair, there are places where that model works, but fronting a remote virtualization stack, alone with a few pieces of dedicated hardware that must be available even when the virtualization stack is down, is not one of them.
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Three year s ubscription... (Score:2)
That may give you some rights. Post a link to the EULA, please.
Re:Three year s ubscription... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if it doesn't, why the hell didn't someone flag that up before signing on for 3 years of payments with no legal recourse? The problem isn't really the vendor here, its the dumb ass that signed the contract which allows the vendor to get away with shit like this.
Pull the contract, when they threaten to sue for breach then you threaten to counter sue for non-performance and non-compliance as the product isn't fit for use.
Re:Three year s ubscription... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it is normal to start with a "cure letter" telling them they are in default on the contract and giving them 30 days to come into compliance or face termination. This usually leads to something both sides can live with.
Re:Three year s ubscription... (Score:4, Informative)
That's exactly the right way where I live. You start with a complaint, then escalate with a letter giving them a last chance to fix the issues. You give them a reasonable term, such as 30 days. After that, you terminate the contract and ask for your money back due to breach of contract.
You'll be much better off if you let a lawyer handle this sort of thing, by the way. But that goes for signing the contract in the first place, too.
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What solves his problems for his internal customers is just moving to a tested product that works. What he does with the vedor is ancilary to that point if he values his internal customers.
Personally, i would move to another product after testing it and getting a service level agreement from the vendor. Then i would decide if it was worth the effort to end the other contract, get restitution for it not working, or just let them have the money but inform them that he will tell his customers that they are cha
Start by posting their name (Score:3)
If you have a legitimate beef with the manufacturer, why hide their name? You might find others with the same problem.
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Because he might want to have a decent relationship with them? Other then this issue, it might be a great product, might be getting a discount and so on.
Future relationship?!? (Score:3)
Because he might want to have a decent relationship with them? Other then this issue, it might be a great product, might be getting a discount and so on.
Future relationship?!?
So they can buy *more* products with bugs an unresponsive support in the future? I can see why you'd want to protect *that* relationship...
Have you thought about publicly shaming them? (Score:3)
Your bed, lie in it. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why is victim blaming getting worse? THEY aren't living up t the contract. SO it's not HIS bed.
He should sue for non-compliance.
Re:Your bed, lie in it. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not as though he had a very good shot at getting a better contract(better product, possibly; but even that vendor wouldn't actually promise any more), so I wouldn't be inclined to blame him; but it'd take some seriously impressive suck to actually give him any legal ground to work with.
Everyone chooses how to spend the costs business (Score:3)
If he had chosen a standards compliant open-source VPN solution, then he would not have to sue. He could hire programmers to fix the problem himself, rather than hiring lawyers to sue the company and hope that someday two years from now the problem is resolved.
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So your suggested solution is a time machine and self-support?
I'd like to introduce you to Bossy, the Spherical Cow.
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Suing likely will cost more than just eating the remainder of the service contract, AND has no guarantee of success.
This is why the whole "proprietary software is supported so it has a lower TCO" is often a myth.
Lockin always has risk, and to that extent, presents a very real cost.
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You chose your vendor poorly. Hope you learned from it. Next time choose a standards based VPN solution that works across many different platforms and clients.
Perhaps. Three years is a long time. Companies change hands and I am here to tell you that the importance that one vendor places on supporting their product often becomes an expense to be trimmed when that company is acquired by another. May you never have to learn just how bad that can get.
Your bed, lie in it. (Score:3)
While I agree with gist of your sentiment, you're making the assumption that the submitter was able to make the choice of vendor. Not all of us get to choose which technologies we're required to support. Maybe a pointy-haired boss told the guy to go with the vendor because his buddy, the vendor's CEO, let's him win at golf.
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His buddy doesn't even have to be with the vendor at all. You would be surprised at how many PHBs will make a tech choice based around what one of their friends use and presents as cool.
I used to push (recomend) a groupware/email solution for small businesses i had as clients. It has its own email server without all the hassles of exchange either. It has killer tech support too. Anyways, one of the partners at a lawfirm saw a golf buddy checking his work email on his cell phone. Instead of that partner just
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He has a choice.
Pay lawyers to get out of the contract (and run the risk of paying lawyers and STILL being on contract).
Eat the remainder of the support costs, learn from his mistakes, and move on.
Guess which probably costs less and has a better EV?
Either way, somebody made a poor decision, and it is going to cost money and time.
Simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
If your company is large enough, have a quick chat with your legal department. A 3 year support contract that isn't providing you with any value is something that's worth addressing. A brief letter from your legal counsel ought to result in an interesting response (whether or not it results in action is another thing entirely).
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Not that they'll want to forgo profit; bu
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Now, if that fails, go through with the legal mumbo-jumbo, and you can then name the company (lawsuits are public records).
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BBB is a scam. It's a private corporation that pretends to be something more. They are beyond useless.
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I'm not sure this is the right way... (Score:5, Funny)
Money (Score:2)
Offer money. If uninterested, offer more money. Repeat until desired result obtained.
You have several approaches (Score:3)
Here are your choices:
I tend to prefer the third option, although I've registered my displeasure on BBB on a few occasions too.
You may not be able to stop paying for the contract (be sure your next one is better worded, though), but you can stop using the service — as soon as you find a replacement...
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Throw out their equipment and buy from a competitor. I tend to prefer [this] option
Unless the company has a government-granted monopoly under one of the "intellectual prohibition" or "imaginary property" rights, with the state-backed power to sue any competitor's interoperable product out of existence.
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Stop paying. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stop paying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop paying. (Score:2)
In rare cases, you can still pay people for a subscription you don't use and use an alternative instead. e.g. Use an open source piece of software. The only small hitch is that usually executives mandate something be used if they pay for it. Which is why these cases are rare.
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Have to read into the summary since there are few actual details, but this was basically my interpretation as well... that this was a poorly made purchase that the execs are now forcing their employees to use simply because they are paying for it. It makes zero sense to me if and when an open source and/or free and/or developed in house product is available that performs better. I've lost track of how many times I've seen this happen, and it's beyond frustrating every time.
My advice (which seems to be all t
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Just stop paying the subscription and inform to them upfront that you consider them to have terminated the contract through their own negligence. Go elsewhere.
DO NOT do that without talking to your lawyer first.
Bad publicity. (Score:2)
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There's an unofficial yahoo email group for our enterprise software owned by a top NYSE-listed company, we get almost no help from their customer service but when you bring up bugs in the email group (which broadcasts to almost all of their customers) they tend to get fixed very quickly by their development staff.
Bypassing customer "service" (Score:2)
If it's anything like many such big companies the customer service team couldn't tell the difference between a bug and user error to save their lives. The're probably also under pressure to admit no bugs - which is easy, because the software is bug-free until the instant a new release is made, anyway.
I wouldn't be surprised if the dev team used the mailing list to bypass the customer service people as well. That way they can actually find out about problems from customers without having to interpret reports
Let me get this straight (Score:3)
It's been more than two years (on a three-year subscription that I can't terminate early)
So, you're worried about upholding your end of the contract even though the other side isn't upholding there end? Or did I miss something?
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Like EULAs, the sales contract put forth by most large corporations starts with that as a starting point.
And you need to have enough clout, and a good legal team to actually end up signing a contract which protects your interests.
We once had a vendor come to us and say we needed to pay the same licensing fee for our development environments as for our production.
It was only when we showed them t
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Sometimes legal stuff looks like programming and we get confused by it, thinking that we need to take all of it literally. The issue here is that the "processor" for a legal document is a judge - a human. If you go before a judge and say "this doesn't work" and you can prove it then the contract isn't going to matter too much. If they have a bunch of lawyers all the better - it'll just cost them more to lose.
If you're using a product outside the intended scope or whatever that's a different story, of cou
Stop paying until the bugs are fixed (Score:5, Insightful)
Proper escalation goes something like this:
0: Make sure you aren't doing something that's going to get you sued / fired. Meaning if this is already on your plate, I hope your manager knows about it. Tell them that you are going to be talking to legal/purchasing first about stopping the bills being paid. AKA "never make a threat you can't carry out".
1: Call your sales rep. Tell them that you find their product unacceptable, and you are withholding payment on the contract until such time as you are provided a list of fix dates, workarounds, etc for the product. Be sure to provide a list of the bugs as you understand them, listed in priority order. Be reasonable -- if you have ten bugs and items 1 and 2 are causing the most grief, it might be reasonable to accept immediate fixes for those, but the other ones my need to wait longer, or you can agree that they can be closed.
2: Start lining up a bake-off of similar devices now, to prep when the contract runs out, and start testing them with the people who found all the bugs in the other one. If the original vendor is unresponsive, switch off their device early. It may look like crap from the financial side, but depending on who and what is riding on this bit of equipment, better reliability / less bugginess / etc may have an immediate ROI and it might be worth it.
Other tips:
Never curse, lose your temper or be less than professional. Save that for when you get off the phone.
Schedule an in-person meeting if possible. Barring in-person, phone. Emails don't convey urgency well.
If the sales rep doesn't give you satisfaction, call their boss, then keep on working the way up to the top. Top managers do not like it when their lower level managers aren't doing their jobs. They want to concentrate on long term, not stuff like this. Make them irritated enough and you will have the management chain ensuring you go away because you make them look bad -- but this is the flip side of the "being professional" bit -- if you keep using words like "unacceptable", "does not meet advertised uptime numbers", "does not match your published specifications", "crashes when XXYY happens", you stay on issue. If you go off issue into raving lunatic, cursing land, you lose your credibility and are dismissed as "angry customer", not "that guy who has a legit list of 10 major bugs and who has his lawyer and finance department witholding payment".
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I like this advice, but in the case at hand -- it's been two years! -- I doubt it's worth wasting any more time trying to get your issues resolved by that vendor. You'll have to eat some costs one way or another.
This is probably a textbook case for promoting free software. That has to be said. And since you'll need a replacement VPN solution, it's not just a pedantic argument.
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Indeed, I'd have done the above much earlier, and/or moved off the vendor and thrown out the junk as a sunk cost long ago. Employee productivity, time to market, seemingly unrelated problems that come down to faulty equipment can all add up quickly and dwarf the remaining cost of the service contract.
If it's been two years, I'm wondering how severe the problems really are and how truly aggressive OP has been at finding a solution -- any solution. When we have stuff that's not working reliably and significan
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Oh, and to answer the "free software" point ... of course ... this is slashdot after all :) Generally when we have bakeoffs with products, we endeavor to include a "free" alternative in the mix. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't.
Similar problem with PepLink (Score:2)
Hmmm ... (Score:3)
Company sells product. Check.
Product has issues. Check.
Company is unresponsive to problems. Check.
Company has you locked into support contract. Check.
Bummer, dude. But what you're describing is pretty much what any of us in the software industry have been seeing for a long time -- the salesman is always lying to you.
Out of curiosity, did you do your own extensive testing and have your legal department put penalty/early termination clauses in? Or, have you become victim to believing what the sales guy told you?
I'm betting half the people on Slashdot have worked at companies where the sales people sold impossible things which don't exist as sold. And the other half has worked for companies which have bought stuff which didn't live up to what the sales guy said.
I'm afraid I have little practical advice for this specific question, but I've seen more than enough examples of the sales guys really stretching the truth about what is real .. to the extent of being quite certain they took the buzzwords from several separate products, turned them into one list, and then claimed they were selling you something which checked all the boxes -- even if there was no way to connect the pieces.
And I've had numerous friends who have been tasked with building something the sales guys sold, only to discover there is no documentation, no resources to turn to, nobody has ever actually done it this way, and there's one guy who costs $4k/day who can be hired to come in and set it up ... if anybody can find him, and assuming he doesn't look at what the sales guys sold and say "wow, I don't think it does that".
So, the moral of the story is ... hang the salesman out the window until he can provide a working system, and make damned sure your legal department is building in clauses which protect you when you realize that you've been hoodwinked.
I've had more than a few vendors after the sale admit that, no, it doesn't really do that, but for our ridiculous consulting fee we can build something which might almost do that.
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This is America (Score:2)
This is America! Be a good patriot/consumer and STFU! Corporation Banks and hedge funds are your betters and should be deferred to in all circumstances.
Bugzilla (Score:2)
Depends on the contract, but probably write it off (Score:2)
Most vendor contracts in my experience have long, obtuse and legally dense clauses in them that seek to prevent customers from discussing publicly issues with the product, and setting maximum compensatory relief for lost business and costs as the initial purchase cost of the solution.
However, many of those clauses are also not enforceable under the specific state/federal (or in the case of Europe, EU) laws. The only real way to know what you recourse is within the terms of the contract is to get advice from
Intransigent vendors (Score:3)
Let me fix that for you ... (Score:3)
... You're a guru, right?
Someone in that company gives a shit, you just have to find them.
Do some homework and start climbing up the ladder using the telephone. No emails for now.
When you hit on someone who's going to help, THEN send up a followup email. Copy your management if applicable.
"I enjoyed our telcon this date, Joe, and I am looking forward to the assistance you have offered in resolving this issue, including your promise t (blah blah).
As we discussed, I can expect resolution by (date) and I will followup by phone (post phone number).
We both want what's best for our firms and your help is greatly appreciated."
If that bastard falls down, climb higher.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Boots... (Score:2)
Vote with your boots. Either kick ass or walk away or both. If you can sue, do so. Find out what your legal remedies are per the contract you signed. I presume that's why there was a contract rather than a handshake. Make it clear to your sales rep that you will not be renewing your contract unless the issue is resolved in a specific amount of time. Business isn't for friendships, and sometimes you have to burn some bridges.
The vendor seems to be Watchguard (Score:4, Informative)
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That was my guess just based on my experience. Their IPSec client was from a third party and it sucked and then they switched to another third party client.
The SSL vpn client seems to be less problematic but I've seen some people insist on using PPTP just to avoid dealing with any WG client.
Re:The vendor seems to be Watchguard (Score:4, Informative)
I was thinking the same thing, but I'm not afraid to name names. I have reported bug after bug and all they ever did was use the bug report as a "support case" and count it against my support allotment then close the case with no resolution. Some issues have been solved after a year or more, but support is unresponsive at best. I can name quite a few known problems, some of which could be potentially exploited for buffer overflows or denial of service attacks.
Just to name a few problems and bugs:
-ssl-vpn prompts the user to upgrade when new software is loaded on the firewall but if a user clicks no it disconnects them. If they click yes it uninstalls the software and fails to rienstall due to permission issues with the teefer driver if the user does not have administrative rights. It cannot be upgraded easily through group policy or windows update local publishing. It is an exe container so group policy is out and publising via local update publisher causes the system to hang at shutdown due to problems related to the driver removal/installation.
-services that use certificate checking fail if dpi is enabled and there is no reasonable workaround (examples: webex, apple itunes and app store). Implementing a realtime host lookup would easily resolve this problem but they only offer a one time hostname lookup which adds the ip to the policy (problematic for just about everything.... yes let's unblock all of akamai, that makes sense!!!)
-sso manager has a memory leak uses huge amounts of resources and eventually stops updating the list of authenticated users until the service is restarted if you have more than 2 domain controllers. We had to schedule a restart of the service every morning to mitigate this and it still uses an insane amount of processor time.
-Version 11.9.1 broke multi-wan pptp so not only is ssl-vpn broken (don't get me started on their poor ipsec support) but now the less secure backup option won't connect...
-expiring or rejecting a ca certificate causes all sites reliant on that certificate to fail to load even if a new certificate is present if dpi is enabled
-email quarantine generates a certificate with the server's ip as the name but links send the user to the hostname thus causing a certificate warning
-a wan connection with a ping monitor will not resume functioning once ping is restored in a multi-wan overflow configuration causing a temporary loss of connectivity to become a permanent one.
-ssl-vpn will not connect over udp in a multi-wan environment
I could go on... but I'll end with a non-bug:
-They clearly run modified versions of open source software but fail to release their code changes to customers or distribute the gpl with their software. This is clear simply from the log files and debugging information and has been complained about as far back as 2005: http://lists.gpl-violations.or... [gpl-violations.org]
Proprietary Vendor Lock-In always sucks. Contract? (Score:3)
For VPN it's just the same. I've been dealing with Cisco AnyCrap VPN for the last 4 months and our problem - establishing a network-transparent VPN access to a remote share to deploy software without Cisco Malware (TM) hijacking our netconfig - still hasn't gone away. Naturally. The fuss is mostly politics (90%) with 3 parties and 15 individuals involved pushing responsibility around and fussing with bullshit that would be fixed in 30 minutes if they'd actually deliver what we need, but I guess that's the usual problem.
Moral to the story, once again, as has been for the past 2 decades:
Never, ever go with proprietary solutions and vendor/service lock-in for mission critical stuff!
That aside, how does your contract look? Is it Lawyer-time yet? Perhaps you should start playing 'legal-ball' or at least start writing snail-mail solicited letters as to indicate that you're pissed and won't take this much longer. Can actually work wonders.
Good luck. And don't forget to add "OpenVPN Compatible" into your next contracts.
Welcome to the new world. (Score:2)
Welcome to the new world.
I am aparently one of the increasingly few Software Engineers that does acutally believe in the overall business benefits of only releasing well-engineered software and not treating your customers like Alpha testers,
As such I am becoming more and more disillusioned about my chances of ever working for a company where all the managers are not just always looking for (and rewarding) ways to push some barely functional piece of badly engineered shit out the door as soon as possible, an
Your IT tech support seems to be worse. (Score:2)
Beta? (Score:3)
Dealing With an Unresponsive Manufacturer Who Doesn't Fix Bugs?
Dunno, it's a good question. But I'm sure that someone at slashdot can answer it with the same reasoning that they' use to still be apparently trying to roll out the beta design, despite the fact that some of it's own users (customers???) have in their sig, "FUCK BETA".
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Dealing With an Unresponsive Manufacturer Who Doesn't Fix Bugs?
Dunno, it's a good question. But I'm sure that someone at slashdot can answer it with the same reasoning that they' use to still be apparently trying to roll out the beta design, despite the fact that some of it's own users (customers???) have in their sig, "FUCK BETA".
The users are the product, not the customer.
Recourse (Score:2)
Socialize it (Score:2)
Socialize the bug. The bigger the audience, the better. I suspect that this is especially important with security issues. Argue that of the three legs of security, the bug violates "availability" if the users can't use the service. Also remind the vendor that even if you can't get out of the contract, you have to provide the service, so you will be forced to seek a different solution.
Back when Usenet was still a thang, I was the primary sysadmin for an SGI shop. Some version of SGI had upgraded NFS to
Lawyer up FFS (Score:2)
Seriously. Two years into a three year contract and they haven't provided what is advertised within a reasonable effort?
It's only been just under a year for the company I just got hired on, I found the website isn't working as advertised, and was never meant to (hard-coded HTML as placeholders, unable to accept AJAX input from my auction plugin despite them saying they could do it) and we're already lawyering up.
We've already been hit with tens of thousands of dollars in losses because of the site - you bet
It's your fault (Score:2)
Sorry, but this is your fault. They'll cover what's in your service contract.
In there you should have very specifically, what is considered reasonable performance. What is a bug. What is not. And how long they have to remedy that. If you don't, that's your own damned fault. If it is in there, and they aren't living up to it, then your lawyers should be talking to theirs about a financial remedy which should also be spelled out in the contract.
This grief can bite you a few ways (Score:2)
I deal a lot with clients who have compliance requirements such as PCI. This sort of thing is an endless source of grief, where the, "it doesn't matter, it's just an appliance" phrase comes up all the time. You have devices put into PCI-scoped network zones to do a job, but which are either using a dusty version of a commodity OS under the hood, or don't support a bunch of requirements like account controls such as password complexity and account lockouts.
Being big-name security appliance and networking com
Re: (Score:2)
Apologies because dev team no longer at company (Score:2)
Do you have a legal department? (Score:2)
You can't get blood out of a stone (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree (Score:2)
Sonicwall is planned obsolescence at its finest and most sinister.