Had an issue the other day where after a number of years our license expired. How it happened at this location or how neither Astaro nor our reseller alerted us to the expiration is another story. This is where we were - arrived in the morning to find everything down.
First thought was to call the reseller but it was 7am and they were not reachable. Second was to call Astaro support. I quickly got through to someone (in Europe I believe).
I explained my situation and asked for a trial license (even 1-2 days) in order to sort out the issue. I was flatly refused. Support said that only resellers can issue trial keys and he was not allowed.
I explained that our enterprise was completely down, and asked him to please help me. He refused. I told him it that was unacceptable. He informed me that the terms I agreed to when I bought my Astaro was that all support was done through the reseller. I argued that when I bought my Astaro years ago with a multi year license that was not the case. I told him that he was likely going to lose a customer if he refused to help me. His paraphrased response: That's your call.
I lost. I hung up without a trial license and Astaro relatively happy to let me be out of luck. I was pretty much in shock. After a few hours I got a hold of my reseller and eventually got a key. But I was amazed at Astaro support and their lack of customer service. I don't know if I got a bum rep or this is a systemic problem or related to the Sophos takeover....
I wanted to report that I am now completely switched off of Astaro to Cisco ASA and filtering solution. I enjoyed the Astaro colorful interface, but Cisco's client although sparser is nice and snappy. I will miss some other nice features, but for me the ultimate test of a company is their customer support. And in this, Astaro failed terribly and I am happy to have it behind me.
cheers everyone, I hope this spurs change of some sort and helps someone have a better experience than I had.
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