Sourcing Fortinet equipment in UAE does authorization status actually affect support access?

been wanting to ask this community specifically because i figured people here would have more practical experience than most...

we are a mid sized organization in Dubai that recently went through a significant network security refresh. FortiGate firewalls, FortiSwitch, and FortiAP were all part of the deployment and the procurement process raised some questions that i could not find clear answers to through official documentation alone.

the specific question is around how strictly Fortinet ties support access and FortiCare contract eligibility to authorized supply chain. we had a situation during procurement where some suppliers were offering noticeably cheaper pricing but the answers around authorization status were vague enough to make the team uncomfortable.

ended up going with Tech Distributor after specifically looking for an authorized Fortinet distributor in Dubai that could confirm legitimate supply chain documentation. the pricing was not the cheapest we found but the FortiCare contract activation went through cleanly without any supply chain questions being raised.

what i want to understand better is whether others have had direct experience with FortiCare support being complicated or refused because equipment came through unauthorized channels. the price difference in the market here is significant enough that procurement keeps revisiting the question and i want to be able to give a definitive answer based on real experience rather than theoretical risk.

has anyone here actually hit a support wall specifically because of supply chain authorization issues on Fortinet equipment?