Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Sonicwall products are not returnable”

pastebin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 118 posts

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#71

Post by smsm42 »

mindslight wrote: post #61
smsm42 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using your credit card for everything is a great way to find yourself deeply in debt. It's (intentionally!) easy to overspend when using a credit card, and end up carrying a balance. The first rule of using credit cards for fun and profit is to never carry a balance. Ever. Now, there is an exception to this rule, on the following conditions (all must apply): 1. You do not pay any interest (yes, possible, many cards…

I don't know if (1) is strictly necessary in the context of (3). But then: 5. You refrain from further transactions with that card, since your grace period is gone and new purchases will immediately accrue interest. (Although I suppose you could operate in an different paradigm where you make payments as frequently as possible with most all of your spending money, and then new purchases on the card are just effective…

In theory, yes, even non-zero-interest loan can be good. In practice, I'd rather not bother given how easy it is to make a mistake and end up overpaying massively because you failed to read some fine print or account for some obscure rule of how purchases combine and accrue interest. Zero is easy. Non-zero is complex and you are not in the position of advantage there as they know their rules much better than you, so in most cases it's not worth it. You can do it right if you have the knowledge, but then surely advice from some random guy on the internet is not going to change your opinion anyway :)

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#72

Post by joosters »

db48x wrote: post #63
brianwawok wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card gets stolen - I call bank, they remove charge, and I don't pay until matter is resolved. Debit card gets stolen - All my money is taken out of my bank. I now cannot pay my rent or buy groceries. I tell bank, and they start an investigation. Maybe in 90 days I get my money back. Never ever use a debit online. In fact, don't use in person. Debit cards are fine for ATM to get cash, for anything else use CC.…

Or you could keep multiple accounts, with just what you're going to spend in the next week or two in your child going account, and everything else in savings. You could still lose some money (hopefully to be refunded), by not enough to sink you.

And risk going overdrawn each week, with all the added costs and fees that brings, if you happen to get your estimated spending slightly wrong.

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#73

Post by celticninja »

mindcrash wrote: post #15
celticninja wrote: post #4

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

Nope, this wouldn't be illegal in the EU. Consumer protection law is a consumer protection law -- meant for when you buy stuff as a person . If you however buy stuff as a business entity consumer law do not apply, so you are just as fucked as the person who made the pastebin. This is also why the likes of Dell and HP sell business services and these services don't come cheap (and when you don't get them and your serv…

I stand corrected. Just checked the UK T&Cs:

Please note that the Right to Cancel applies to Home customers only.

You return goods by using the Right to Cancel so while not explicitly mentioned it seems to be the same as in the US.

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#74

Post by czk »

k_sze wrote: post #26

It'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. In contrast, we bought a whole bunch of Mikrotik's RouterBoards, they're really inexpensive and come with really powerful features that you don't need to pay extra for. We're starting…

Yeah, the PayWALL base features are very limited unless you purchase the "advanced" features packages, and there are a lot of them. The basic functionality included for free in a $40 linksys/cisco require a subscription fee to use on the SonicWALL. Some of the extra features like gateway av/content filtering can peg the CPU on the device, making the lower-end SonicWALLs not a very good purchase for anyone wanting to do more than forward some ports. They allow consumers to purchase DPI on the lower end devices but they lack the CPU power required, and turning it on can bring your entire network down.

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#75

Post by joosters »

lambenttelos wrote: post #66

I'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. If they didn't have this policy and I was a state sponsored intelligence agency I would be buying, tampering, and returning as many as I could.

Thanks to Snowden, we know that intelligence agencies already intercept shipments, they have no need to buy & return stuff.

Plus, just about every device with a computer/storage inside could in theory be tampered with. So, your argument seems to imply that a 'no return' policy should be enforced on most equipment. That's just insane.

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#77

Post by mindslight »

smsm42 wrote: post #71
mindslight wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if (1) is strictly necessary in the context of (3). But then: 5. You refrain from further transactions with that card, since your grace period is gone and new purchases will immediately accrue interest. (Although I suppose you could operate in an different paradigm where you make payments as frequently as possible with most all of your spending money, and then new purchases on the card are just effective…

In theory, yes, even non-zero-interest loan can be good. In practice, I'd rather not bother given how easy it is to make a mistake and end up overpaying massively because you failed to read some fine print or account for some obscure rule of how purchases combine and accrue interest. Zero is easy. Non-zero is complex and you are not in the position of advantage there as they know their rules much better than you, so…

I completely agree. I just wanted to highlight a major one of those traps that can get you if you do start carrying a balance. Doing so should only ever be out of complete necessity, so whether you can get an interest-free offer seems somewhat beside the point.

FWIW it feels like the additional complexity of those offers coupled with the relaxing of standard payment behavior is a great way to trip people up.

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#78

Post by ryanlol »

dingaling wrote: post #64
davidu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside, you should never use a debit card online, ever, ever, ever. Candidly, you should never use it for anything other than taking money out of an ATM.

> As an aside, you should never use a debit card online, ever, ever, ever. For many people in Europe ( including myself ) the only other online option is a bank transfer, which also has the risk of loss of funds if you mistype the target account number[0] The workaround for only having a debit card is to have it linked to a buffer account that only holds sufficient funds for the planned purchases. [0] when submitting…

What's this mythical European country where you cant get a credit card? There are places where most people don't have them, sure, but they tend to be very easy to get.

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#79

Post by tracker1 »

edkennedy wrote: post #34
MrTonyD wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just don't buy Dell. Why should I have to examine every supplier's fine print to figure out whether I need to go through a reseller?

The idea is you use a reseller for all your products, they manage the relationship with the manufacturer or publisher and work to get you the best price/service. If you have doubts about using a "middle man" keep them honest with a 2nd or 3rd quote, sometimes direct every now and then. But working with one rep for all your products can be a huge boon to doing business in savings of money and time. Disclaimer: I work…

A company I used to work for bought a huge (for the time) NAS full of drives... when one of the drives failed they (IBM) wouldn't send a replacement, as it was "discontinued"... if it weren't for the VAR, they never would have gotten the drive replaced... something like the following (3-way call).

    IBM: "Well, we're IBM and you're $300k annual spending wouldn't be a huge loss"
    VAR: "Well, this is Bill from VAR, and we do over $40M in purchases a year, and this will be very enlightening in future purchase recommendations."
    IBM: "Uhhh... hold on for a moment please..."

Re: “Sonicwall products are not returnable”

#80

Post by Xylakant »

mindcrash wrote: post #15
celticninja wrote: post #4

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

Nope, this wouldn't be illegal in the EU. Consumer protection law is a consumer protection law -- meant for when you buy stuff as a person . If you however buy stuff as a business entity consumer law do not apply, so you are just as fucked as the person who made the pastebin. This is also why the likes of Dell and HP sell business services and these services don't come cheap (and when you don't get them and your serv…

> Protip for freelancers and small businesses: While it might look really cool, don't buy IT equipment as a business (unless you want to pay extra for services guaranteeing continous operation of said equipment), but as a consumer.

This doesn't pay off. If you're earning more than 15K EUR per year, you have to charge VAT. If you buy stuff as consumer you're not eligible for a VAT return. If you're any kind of limited liability company, stuff needs to be on the company books. You certainly can buy as a private person and resell to company, but that just increased the price by about 20%. Plus: selling stuff to the company makes the tax authorities look really hard at your papers since at least in germany, if prices are not market rate you might just have committed a criminal offence (verdeckte Gewinnentnahme). Talk to your tax accountant before pulling stunts like this.

Post reply on HN