“Sonicwall products are not returnable”

Dell EqualLogic™ and EqualLogic-branded products, Dell|EMC, EMC and VCE-branded products, Dell Compellent™ and Compellent-branded products, Dell KACE™ and KACE-branded products, Dell Force10™ and Force10-branded products, PowerVault ML6000 tape libraries, PowerVault DL and DR products, Dell SonicWALL™ and SonicWALL-branded products, Dell Wyse™ and Wyse-branded products, Dell Quest™, Quest™, ScriptLogic™ and VKernel™ branded products, Dell Software branded products, Dell Data Protection | Rapid Recovery and Dell Data Protection | Rapid Recovery branded products, Dell StatSoft and StatSoft-branded products, non-Dell-branded enterprise products, enterprise software, and customized products may not be returned at any time.<p>[<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dell.com&#x2F;learn&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;uscorp1&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;us-return-policy" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dell.com&#x2F;learn&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;uscorp1&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;us-return-...</a>]

It&#x27;s not just bad business practice. At the company I work at, our anecdotal experience with Sonicwall products has just been shitty. You buy a router and you still need to pay extra to activate advanced features. What a shitty product.<p>In contrast, we bought a whole bunch of Mikrotik&#x27;s RouterBoards, they&#x27;re really inexpensive and come with really powerful features that you don&#x27;t need to pay extra for. We&#x27;re starting to deploy them everywhere and we&#x27;ll eventually phase out the shitty Sonicwall.

You may be able to get some level of relief from your credit card. My American Express card comes with the following benefit for free:<p>&quot;<i>If you try to return an eligible item within 90 days from the date of purchase and the merchant won&#x27;t take it back, American Express may refund the full purchase price (excluding shipping and handling), up to $300 per item, up to a maximum of $1,000 per calendar year per Card account, if you purchased it entirely with your eligible American Express® Card. Please read important exclusions and restrictions.‡</i>&quot;

I bet the EULA for the firewall&#x27;s software says you can return it for a full refund if you don&#x27;t agree to its terms.

I sympathise, and I appreciate someone raising awareness of the situation. Perhaps the negative attention will prompt Dell to review this policy.<p>That said, is it really normal to expect to be able to return a non-faulty product once it&#x27;s shipped, or unreasonable of Dell to refuse such returns if they don&#x27;t want to sell on that basis?<p>In my country (the UK) there are <i>consumer</i> protection laws that include various rights to return goods purchased remotely for a short period even if they aren&#x27;t defective. In principle, these are supposed to allow for not being able to inspect the actual product the way you could in person if you bought from a store. However, for better or worse, business customers do not enjoy the same legal protections as private individuals, and a lot of potentially one-sided terms that would be unlikely to stand up in a B2C context because of statutory protections seem to be routine in B2B sales.

Did you buy it with a credit card? Most of them have additional protections that let you fix situations like this. Not sure if it applies to returns, but for instance I know you get a guaranteed extra warranty with anything you buy with your amex past the manufacturers, etc..

This would be illegal in the EU. The US needs better consumer protection laws.

This is why, if you&#x27;re a small company unable to have a direct, strategic, named Dell sales relationship, you buy from Dell through a reseller. ALWAYS USE A RESELLER. The reseller has the strategic relationship, they&#x27;ll go to bat for you, and you don&#x27;t have to mess around on twitter trying to get your $500 back.

Send it back, with documentation, and do a chargeback on the card used to purchase it.<p>It will be very difficult to contest a chargeback for something you returned.

Upsetting a business customer by not refunding a $500 purchase isn&#x27;t worth it. I had a longer comment attempting to rationalize this policy, but deleted it and gave up because there&#x27;s just no way this is good for business.

Sonicwall is now owned by Francisco Partners. Dell sold SonicWall as part of the divestiture efforts.

I can relate to Dell shady tactics and deceit. I too was a big fan of Dell products and recommended them plenty over the many years. Black Friday 2015 I got wind of Dell having a great deal on Xbox &quot;bundle&quot;. I waited all day for the timing to be right so I could order it when it went live.<p>When it finally arrived at my house, I was missing several items that were part of the &quot;bundle&quot; I paid for. I was Missing the headset as well as the extra controller and free game they advertised. Calling their support was an exercise in patience as it turned into a debate about what I ordered. Dell had purposely sent the included receipt with tactically chosen wording that I had just ordered a normal Xbox bundle they always sold. A classic bait-n-switch.<p>I had an argument with the support person about that being wrong yet they insisted, DESPITE my time&#x2F;date of order showing to purposely take advantage of the BF deal and a screen shot of my order. They still fought it as the included receipt was their trump card. So basically all a company has to do is fix the sent receipt and change the order wording and there is no defense for being taken advantage of? I was livid.<p>A quick search of the net found out I wasn&#x27;t alone in this bat&#x2F;switch Xbox bundle BF deal. Eventually they gave in to the headset and sent me a Dell gift card for the amount to order a headset through them. This was now further proof I had ordered a SPECIAL BF deal as they admitted it by comping the headset. But they still would not budge on the extra controller or the free game.<p>I decided to try and stick it to them instead for their deceptive tactics and issued a complaint with my credit card for not getting what I paid for. I filed for full amount of purchase of the BF deal and explained what happened to my CC company. They mentioned they had similar complaint already about same thing for someone else. So I did a chargeback. Not intending to get free Xbox but rather try to scare Dell to just make good.<p>Months went by and I find out Dell fought it, as expected. Dell now was offering me a full refund and to send everything back. I was ready to do just that and buy from elsewhere now BUT, get this, Dell said I had to pay for return shipping! So now instead of getting everything I paid for, they now expect me to be OUT $30 to ship it back with now NOTHING to show for.<p>So that is where it ended. I gave up. I wasn&#x27;t getting the advertised controller or free game and just wasn&#x27;t going to be -$30 at this point for nothing than to prove a point. So I kept the Xbox, paid for it and just accepted Dell has now become a piece of shit company. And I will NEVER buy or recommend to anyone, including many clients, Dell or anything the sell again.

This is irrelevant if you use a proper business account like American Express. You have return protection, are able to return anything within 90 days, if ymthe merchant won&#x27;t accept it then the payment processor does a charge back and returns your money.

I&#x27;m not exactly sure why people are so upset about this. It was a mistake made by the customer on a product that could be a security nightmare for somebody else if it was tampered with.<p>If they didn&#x27;t have this policy and I was a state sponsored intelligence agency I would be buying, tampering, and returning as many as I could.

A big reason to buy on a credit card. I would initiate a chargeback and Dell will return the money whether they want the router back or not.<p>I&#x27;m not advocating to carry a balance when using credit. I pay mine off every month reaping the benefits without paying any interest.

It&#x27;s good to see that Dell&#x2F;SonicWall really are committed to driving customers away.

Good luck with this in Maine... I believe Maine has a 30 day implied warranty law that makes all products returnable, with a few exceptional categories.

i&#x27;m so glad that in the UK we have distance selling rules which means anything sold &quot;mail order&quot; can be returned within 14 days.