How does Cisco Partner smartnet work?

So I have a smartnet for a Cisco device via a Cisco partner. They provide the first few tiers of support and can send me iOS files when I need it.

I checked with the Cisco sncheck tool and it says there is no support. The providers engineer said this is normal and they will still provide the support etc.

This doesn't sound right to me? Surely if Cisco say it's not in support then I'm not legally entitled to software updates and TAC support?

Does anyone know where it says the in the partner agreement with Cisco that every device needs an agreement or am I wrong?