ZoneAlarm pro support censors problems

Dear community,

I feel I need to inform you about appaling practices by Checkpoint. I've been a happy ZoneAlarm Pro user sinds version 5. However, recently, I had a problem:

With ZA enabled, my gigabit network speed dropped to roughly 200 megabit. To narrow down a possible cause, I've even gone as far as installing ZA on a fully updated Windows XP SP3 without any other software installed. No dice, it was blatantly obvious ZoneAlarm was the root cause.

I contacted chat support and all they could advise me was: turn the product on and off. It confirmed my results and then they said: we can't help you, you used Iperf (network throuhput test tool) to test and that's a third party tool. I kindly made clear the same results could be observed with windows shares and asked them what tool I should use then.

The answer I got was: well we don't know of any problem, can I assist you with another matter. Say what? I then had to push for a refund which luckily they allowed (I was using a new licence 3 months and refunds are only given during the first month - but I got an exception to that policy).

Since I'm not the only user in my circle of friend that uses ZA, I posted a question on their forum whether someone could reproduce what I experienced. Maybe someone already figured out a fix. They deleted my post because I mentioned I was forced to install comodo for my computer. But I still wanted to use ZA so I was hoping the forums guru's had some ideas.

They then also deleted my post asking why I was not allowed to post that thread. They also deleted that post.

So you see, there are no problems with ZoneAlarm. IF you have one, you are out of luck because the mere notion of having a problem will be censored and they cannot help you.

And yes, I'm *** fuming!

 

Well, that's not the proper way to handle bug reports Especially for security company
Did they at least tried to reproduce your problem in their lab ? The answer of a chat support looks like a generic one...

Could someone try to verify that, since Jeroen1000 have troubles with raising that question on ZA forums ?

 

I have the transcript of that chat. But it might be a little nasty to post it really.

Anyone familiar with Iperf can try this:

1) on the server pc run iperf -s -w 65000
2) on the client pc run iperf -c x.x.x.x -w 65000

you can get the tool here

Notes:
- the x's represent the IP-address of the server. For instance 192.168.1.10
- I disabled all security software on the server pc
- I disabled all security software on the client pc (fresh install so I only disabled windows defender and the windows firewall).
- I ran a test with ZA enabled on the client, and ZA disabled. ZA was not present on the server.
- I swapped the server PC for a laptop and got the same results

No, they did not try to replicate. The support representative was not very skilled in the technical department and could not make sure an engineer would even take a look at my problem because 'there are no known issues'.

Ps: I got around 930 megabit between client and server(s). Both devices were connected to the same switch with cables of less than 3 metres.
With ZA enabled my speed dropped between 170 and 200 megabit.