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?

Thursday Throw-together

Aack, I thought the manic Monday was supposed to end on Monday. Guess not. Le sigh.  Ok, here's the skinny.  I know you can't wait to read all about it!!

I'm on the computer this AM, merrily checking my e-mail, Twitter, etc.  Then, blue screen.  That's all. Yikes.  Ok, no big deal, just a glitch. Right?? So I shut down, restart & run a scan.  About 2 minutes into the scan. Boom!! No blue screen but ... TOTAL SHUT DOWN!!! What is going on?!?! OK, still no reason to panic.  I have to go to the university to pick up books for the fall semester; I'll have the guys in the computer check it.  They know so much more about this than I do. Right?

Wrong.  I am at the moment sitting in the computer lab, running a second scan with Avast antivirus.  I ran the first scan with Norton (btw, this is also what caused the total shutdown earlier. Word to all the Norton users), which ran in no time & showed no viruses.  OK. So the computer guy says "it was probably just a thing". A thing!!! What in the world is a "thing"?!?! BTW, the Avast scan has been running for 10 minutes & is only 9% complete.  Why was the Norton scan so quick?

So, with that said, I am frantically typing away to get this post up before my computer freaks again.  If I vanish into the nether regions of the cyberworld, you'll know why.

So, how's your week?  Are you have any similarly exciting events happening?