Firewalla Gold SE support not helpful
Beware, I bought a firewalla Gold SE, roughly 13 months ago. Stopped working randomly. Tried to troubleshoot it with support. The process took forever for them to respond, and ultimately told me I have to pay more than 300 dollars to repair the unit I paid ~$450 for. Terrible customer service.
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They stated it was a hardware malfunction, specifically the board. None of this is something that I did to it, in fact it was just sitting in one area untouched and malfunctioned.
Mind you I am a novice and did my best to troubleshoot it with their software. Ultimately I was told there was nothing that can be done to repair it. I was told it is "$325 for the service, plus $10 for shipping and any applicable sales tax."
I think its really sad that you pay so much for a product, and then if something out of your control like this happens, you are SOL, and this is their response. Mind you after days of communication.
Really upset about the whole process. Was recommended by several people to try this product.
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Hi Rahul,
I apologize for the inconvenience this issue has caused you. I've reviewed the thread, and I see that you reported the issue on 1/8/2025, and your purchase date was 11/30/2023. Unfortunately, your unit is about one month out of warranty. Our support can usually make exceptions to warranties if the problem is easily fixable. (our warranty is 1 year)
On January 8th, you indicated the problem happened after a power outage. Our support team spent several days helping you to look at the issue and see if it is even recoverable, easily fixable. I believe the conclusion was that the unit's internals, particularly the disk, were not usable.
Since the cause of this is related to a power outage and not something easily fixable, they offered an out-of-warranty repair option, which involves replacing the motherboard
Again, I truly regret the inconvenience this has caused, and please let support know if you need further assistance or clarification on the next steps.
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I'm not associated with Firewalla, but I'm still confused. If the issue happened because of a power outage, perhaps you should've invested in a battery backup solution or other surge protection preventative measures. Also, you paid $325 and shipping. If you were unhappy with the product, why did you continue pursuing getting it repaired? What was shipped to you? It probably is extremely frustrating that you were only a month past the warranty, but stuff happens like that all the time. And their manufacturer warranty time frame is a typical length of time for most products. There are alternative products and DIY options at your disposal. Just saying...
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Observations noted. I did have a back up. And that is just speculation that it was caused by a power outage, because I suggested that statement in my correspondences with the suppor team. I contacted the support team for help, and they suggested the $325 with shipping. I have not paid that. I understand there are alternatives. I simply posting my experience so that others can gain. That is it.
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FWIW, I've contacted Firewalla a couple times over the years and I gotta' say, their support is way better than pretty much any other tech company I've ever worked with. Having said that, I wonder if Firewalla would ever consider offering an extended warranty "add-on" during purchase; it sounds like what you are upset about is that your device broke after the warranty expired but if you had had this option (and had taken it), you would still be perfectly happy.
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I just read many forums on reddit. It sounds like there are major issues with their support staff that string you along even in warranty without any addressing of underlying issues, even if that maybe hardware. Once the warranty ends you are SOL.
I hope firewalla can provide better customer service. People who are shelling out this kind of money to buy these machines deserve better.
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One thing that might be worth Firewalla considering long term is some sort of extended service plan subscription (maybe alongside the MSP offering/packaged with it)? These are somewhat expensive devices and I’d consider paying extra for a service plan to cover them, particularly if it included something like overnight replacement and shipping the new unit out before the defective unit was returned. Having worked with enterprise vendors like Fortinet and Sonicwall, this is a pretty common offering, and on a consumer level Apple offers this now through AppleCare monthly subscriptions. It could be a nice ongoing revenue stream for Firewalla.
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This electronics gear is very important in my home and I made every effort to secure it to the max along with my security alarm and property cameras. I tried to make it as bullet proof as possible. I have a 1,000 watt Tripp Lite Isolation Transformer to take care of high incoming spikes and I piggy back a ups in case of a complete power outage. I have been very happy with my decision to go this route.
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Rahul, I'm not clear why you think Firewalla support is lacking. Your product is out of warranty. They didn't string you along until it was out of warranty--you reported the issue after your box was out of warranty. You are suggesting that the cause of the malfunction could have been something other than the power outage. Given the symptoms you report, that seems a logical conclusion, but sure, it could have been something else. It doesn't matter. A bad thing happened after your box was out of warranty. Firewalla offered you a fix.
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