Since a few years ago we have been using the Fortigate firewall system offered by Fortinet. We also purchased a small-sized Fortigate 30E model for testing purposes. The FortiCare service license expired in March 2019, and the service was renewed last month. We purchased a one-year FortiCare license through a reseller called Corporate Armor, and a few days later, we received the license key and successfully completed the installation. After installation, we were able to upgrade to new s/w.
Wait! I found out that the newly purchased license will be terminated in March, not September. Why?
I bought a one-year license, but it was strange that only 6 months of service was supported, so I contacted the reseller company and they said it was a vendor issue.
Finally, I got a vendor online to discuss.
At first, they said it was a database error and it can be fixed easily. After a while, I could talk to the staff in charge of the registration service. His explanation is that the customer has purchased a year’s worth of licenses, but due to the Advanced service policy that is applied automatically, the new license will be applied from March last year when the license was expired.
What? it doesn’t make sense at all.
Basically, the customer didn’t renew the license on time, so as a penalty, we cut your license in half.
Although we have seen many vendor license policies so far, this type of unilateral policy will have a significant impact on corporate reputations.
And recently they removed 8×5 service levels and only support only expensive 24×7 support options.
We intend to withdraw the Fortinet device’s offer in many ongoing projects.
We are also dealing with the Palo Alto firewall system and it has much better customer service and system performance.