Watchguard Support - Understaffed? Overwhelmed?

shaazaminatorshaazaminator
in Technical Discussion

Complaining on public forums is not something I normally do, but has anyone had issues with Watchguard Support lately with the lack of response and remediation of tickets?

On 12-17-21 I submitted a High Priority ticket because out of the blue my wireless clients couldn't resolve DNS through the Watchguard AP's. Sorta Important IMHO.

The case wasn't assigned to anyone until 12-21-21, and then had to be escalated and that response wasn't until 12-25-21.

I figured out the problem on my own.

On 1-5-2020 I submitted a Medium Priority case, and as of this posting the case is still waiting to be assigned to a support rep.

All my devices are covered with Live Security subscriptions, along with Basic or Total Security subscriptions.

According to WG, even with the Standard support level, I should have received a response within four to eight hours for either ticket. Sooner for higher support levels.

Anyone else experience this?

Thanks for listening,

  • Doug

It's usually something simple.

Comments

  • George_GrinnellGeorge_Grinnell WatchGuard Representative

    Hello Doug,

    I appreciate you taking the time to express your concerns about WatchGuard support. As the VP of Support, this kind of feedback is important for me to hear and I am sorry your experience was poor. I acknowledge that our support has fallen below our normal high standards for response time. This has occurred primarily because of staffing shortages. We experienced employee turnover in 2021 that has affected our ability to handle spikes in case volume. We have been actively hiring in Support to regain our staffing levels. While we have been successful in hiring quite a few new technicians in the last three months, you can imagine it takes time for support technicians to get up to speed. We still have open support positions to fill. If you know of people interested in working at WatchGuard, please encourage them to apply. Support technicians primarily works remotely now, so positions are open for hire from any region.

    We have reviewed your December support case and agree that the level of support we provided was poor. Unfortunately that period of time was WatchGuard’s highest case volume of the year. High volume was triggered by a service degradation with AuthPoint started by an AWS IoT outage. To make matters worse, the high case volume came at a time when we usually experience lower case volume and more support technicians take time off.

    At the same time, I recognize that this cannot be an excuse. It is WatchGuard’s responsibility to provide quality service at all times. I want to assure you that our entire support team is working hard to ensure our response times improve and we meet the expectations of our customers and ourselves. Again, thank you for taking time to give us feedback.

    Best Regards
    George Grinnell
    Vice President, WatchGuard Support

    George Grinnell
    WatchGuard Representative

  • shaazaminatorshaazaminator

    George,

    Thank You for taking the time to not only read my complaint, but for your genuine and honest response.

    Your openness regarding the struggles WG Support has experienced is refreshing and I commend you on it. I wish other companies could be as forthright as WG.

    There is someone I know that just received a degree in Cyber-Security and is having a hard time getting his foot in the door. I'll point him your way.

    Once again thanks for the response and keep up the good work.

    • Doug

    It's usually something simple.

  • Alan_MercerAlan_Mercer
    Long time WG user and have worked with George many times over the years, particularly on betas back to the initial release of Fireware. He’s a stand up guy and over the years WatchGuard has had many others. If they didn’t we would have moved on at some point in the past 26 years going back to the original Firebox in 1996.
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