u/Weary-Ideal4127

Alright, update for anybody thinking about doing this promo: don’t waste your damn time.

I went through the whole eval. Set up the trial, added SNMP and SSH credentials for my 8 network devices, got everything talking, sat through the calls with the sales rep, went through their pitch, the whole nine yards.

During the process I was told I qualified. Then after I’d already sunk all this time into it, I get an email from marketing saying I’m disqualified. No real explanation why.

Asked the sales rep WTF happened and basically got told, he doesnt know and that marketing decides who qualifies, not us.....So apparently even the rep taking you through the trial can tell you that you qualify and it means jack shit because some marketing team makes the final call afterward.

Come on.

If there are extra requirements, put them up front. Don’t have somebody spend hours setting up SNMP/SSH, connecting their network, sitting through sales calls and doing a full eval just to pull the rug at the end.

Whole thing feels like a bait-and-switch to get people into a sales pitch. Maybe some people actually get the Dream Machine, but I sure as hell didn’t after doing everything they asked.

Huge waste of my time. Won’t be falling for one of these promos again.

Just warning other people before they waste HOURS on this garbage promo like I did.

The requirements are WAY more ridiculous than they make them sound upfront. You basically need EIGHT physical managed devices/firewalls/switches connected and fully configured. PFsense apparently doesn’t count, virtual stuff doesn’t count, and they keep nitpicking what qualifies and what doesn’t.

Then you have to enable SNMP and SSH across ALL EIGHT devices and get everything discovered properly. That alone is a massive headache if you’re just trying to get a stupid free switch!!!

Meanwhile the sales reps are calling NONSTOP. I was getting calls and emails almost every day wanting to “hop on another call” or “check progress.” The problem is most of them aren’t even technical enough to help solve the actual issues. It’s just sales pressure over and over and over.

And THEN the marketing team starts judging your WEBSITE.

Apparently your website has to specifically mention managed services/MSP-type work, and if the website was created recently, they can disqualify you for that too. Yes, seriously. They literally look at when your domain/site was created. So first they ask for a business website, then suddenly they act suspicious because it’s “too new.” Maybe mention that upfront before making people waste days setting this up???

The whole thing feels like moving goalposts the entire time.

After all that work, configuring devices, dealing with sales calls, troubleshooting discovery issues, enabling SNMP/SSH everywhere, and wasting hours of your life… you get some generic disqualification email with no real explanation.

If you actually want the product and want to sit through a giant sales funnel, fine. But if you’re mainly doing this for the free switch, DON’T BOTHER. They’re making the requirements harder and harder and wasting people’s time!!!

Just warning other people before they waste HOURS on this garbage promo like I did.

The requirements are WAY more ridiculous than they make them sound upfront. You basically need EIGHT physical managed devices/firewalls/switches connected and fully configured. PFsense apparently doesn’t count, virtual stuff doesn’t count, and they keep nitpicking what qualifies and what doesn’t.

Then you have to enable SNMP and SSH across ALL EIGHT devices and get everything discovered properly. That alone is a massive headache if you’re just trying to get a stupid free switch!!!

Meanwhile the sales reps are calling NONSTOP. I was getting calls and emails almost every day wanting to “hop on another call” or “check progress.” The problem is most of them aren’t even technical enough to help solve the actual issues. It’s just sales pressure over and over and over.

And THEN the marketing team starts judging your WEBSITE.

Apparently your website has to specifically mention managed services/MSP-type work, and if the website was created recently, they can disqualify you for that too. Yes, seriously. They literally look at when your domain/site was created. So first they ask for a business website, then suddenly they act suspicious because it’s “too new.” Maybe mention that upfront before making people waste days setting this up???

The whole thing feels like moving goalposts the entire time.

After all that work, configuring devices, dealing with sales calls, troubleshooting discovery issues, enabling SNMP/SSH everywhere, and wasting hours of your life… you get some generic disqualification email with no real explanation.

If you actually want the product and want to sit through a giant sales funnel, fine. But if you’re mainly doing this for the free switch, DON’T BOTHER. They’re making the requirements harder and harder and wasting people’s time!!!

I signed up for the free AP giveaway after seeing ads everywhere and honestly regret wasting the time on it.

The process was way more involved than advertised. There were a lot of qualification requirements that only became clear after I had already spent hours setting things up. I was told certain devices had to meet very specific criteria, including physical firewall/network requirements, and even got feedback that my website being recently created could affect qualification.

What frustrated me most was the amount of sales pressure during the trial. I was getting multiple calls and emails a day asking about the setup and trial progress. The reps were friendly, but most of them were sales-focused rather than technical support, so if you ran into actual deployment/configuration issues, you were mostly figuring it out yourself.

After spending a ton of time configuring devices, enabling SNMP/SSH, and trying to meet the requirements, I eventually got a generic email saying I didn’t qualify. No real explanation.

Maybe some people have a good experience with the promo, but for me it felt like a huge time sink for something that was never clearly explained upfront. Just sharing this so other people know what they’re getting into before committing hours to the trial.