Thursday, August 26, 2010

Thursday Tantrum - - a bit of a rant

OK, I've figured out what to do with Thursdays.  I will either rant or toot someone's horn.  Today is unfortunately a rant.  I am a stickler for customer service, I admit.  If I can work with people and treat them kindly and with courtesy, I think it is not unreasonable to expect of others.  Lest you think me a heartless curmudgeon, let me assure you I am not.  I completely understand if someone is having a bad day.  With that said, on with the rant!!

For 3 years, I have used Norton products to provide antivirus protection for our home network.  In January, I upgraded to the "bells & whistles" premier edition without hesitation as I had no previous difficulty.  Then, I started having difficulties with the system.  Not being the brightest when it comes to technological issues, I did not immediately attribute this to the Norton product.  Over the course of the past 8 months, I have made various adjustments in an attempt to rectify the issue: purchased an external hard drive (placing all photos, music, iTunes library, etc on this), took it to my computer guy to delete extraneous files, etc.  Finally, last month, he says "hey, you have Norton, that's almost like a virus in itself. It REALLY slows systems down." Eureka!  So before I took the plunge to delete Norton, I downloaded a free antivirus software (plug for Avast here) and added an additional 2GB to my computer.  After this, I continued to have issues with the computer running slowly, freezing & crashing.  OK, enough is enough.

So the rant is regarding my treatment by the customer "support" staff today.  Of course, the individual assisting me was an individual not residing in these fair United States.  When I explained the issue, I was informed it had been greater than 60 days since purchase & therefore I was not entitled to any form of refund.  End of conversation.  Thank you for contacting Norton.  OK, my bad.  Next time, I will read the impossible to find, refund policy.  So I decide, whatever, it is an inferior product. I will uninstall it & just eat the loss.  Except, it froze when I tried to uninstall!!! ARGH!!!  I can't use it & I can't get rid of it; what is up with that?!!?!

Fortunately, after the computer froze & crashed again, and a couple more attempts I was able to uninstall this gem.  So, since this is my blog, I would like to say: I will think carefully about purchasing ANY products from Norton in the service.  The product doesn't work, causes innumerable system issues, technical/customer support is nonexistent, and the site is difficult to navigate to find any helpful information.  I don't need the aggravation when there are free products that are EASY to use.

Was my reaction over the top?? What are your thoughts on poor customer service?

What do you do when you have issues with a product purchased on the internet?

7 comments:

  1. This is exactly why I don't purchase many products over the internet. Norton sucks but so does McAfee too. I almost think it's a conspiracy to force you to keep purchasing new computers every couple of years. I'm about to throw my laptop into the wall and it's not even 2 years old.

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  2. I have Norton too and I had no idea why my PC was running slowly. My husband told me it was Norton, but I didn't believe him. I just stuck with my Mac and stopped using my PC altogether. Thanks for sharing. I have to let my husband know, he was right. http://CleverlyChanging.com

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  3. Thanks for the update of Norton. Customer service is a big thing for me too.
    We use AVG Free and Ad-Aware for our computer. My brother is a computer tech and he installed a program called CC Cleaner- it helps clean up your computer and make it run faster.
    THanks for visiting my blog- found you on blog frog!

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  4. My hubby, who is a computer guy tells everyone he knows never to use Norton. We use AVG and sometimes hijack this! which are both free and work really well.

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  5. Bad customer service makes me crazy! You should hear my husband lay into the cable company when service is bad. (thanks for visiting my blog)

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  6. I have to agree with you about Norton and McAfee. I use Kaspersky and love it! Not only does it scan my computer with no slow downs but it killed the virus that McAfee or Norton couldn't stop.

    Visting from blogfrog.

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  7. Awesome, thanks for the tips ladies!!

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