Every morning before venturing out into Atlanta traffic it is essential that you tune in to your favorite news broadcast to listen to the litany of traffic ills and areas to avoid. In keeping with that notion, I’m starting a new category of Traffic Alerts to notify you of goods and services who pretty much have stolen my valuable time and effort.

I really don’t want this to be a rant, but admittedly I was pissed off yesterday and I certainly will alter my purchasing behavior (and have instructed The Hubby that his purchasing behavior will be altered as well) from here on out. So here’s the story:

6 weeks ago the lovely automated reminder system of my Norton Internet Securities program began to notify me that my subscription would be lapsing soon. Great! Very helpful! I then went to the Symantec site where they told me that my version could be renewed but no longer had technical support (The irony of this will soon be revealed). Thus decided to download an upgrade and was pointed to a page where I chose to upgrade to Norton AntiVirus 2006. I purchased and downloaded and all was fine.

Within a few days, I noticed new pop-ups that continued to tell me that my subscription was about to expire. I figured that it was just the older version telling me and since I wasn’t using that version anymore that it was no biggie. Then last week I began getting error messages saying that I should uninstall and reinstall the antivirus program because it could not conduct it’s update process. Yesterday I set aside time to fix it.

So I located the original e-mail, went to the Symantec site where I still had a few days left on my 60 day window for downloads (otherwise I would need to pay $6.99 to extend that time). I then uninstalled and then reinstalled the program. Only to get the same exact message.

So then I went to technical support where I entered several questions and realized that I needed a Subscription Key– New keys come with upgrades and apparently they were supposed to send me one but didn’t. I surfed around and searched several other things to try to figure out if my authentication key (they sent me that) was the subscription key. I also searched to find out where and how to enter. I suppose I spent a little over an hour using their “Knowledge Base” only to answer “This was not helpful” to every page when asked for feedback.

I then I gave up and decided to ask for help. I soon learned that talking to a person required the charge of an outrageous fee. I was not all too keen on doing this since I did not have a code that, according to everything I read, they were supposed to send me. Thus I tried to use their submit a question to technical support to get them to send me one. I’m not even sure how I got to this form. I’ve tried to recreate it since then so I can show you the form, but I can’t get there. Anyway, when I got to the form it seemed pretty straightforward, which was good because I was good an irritated at this point. However, they require that you enter your country…well…. the United States or any variation of our country was not on the list. Since this was a required field to submit the question, I chose the United Kingdom figuring that at least there would be no question that I needed my answer in English. I then pressed submit. And…. the form went no where. I refreshed and pressed submit again no less than 5 more times (waiting 5-10 minutes each time just in case traffic was bad). Another 40 minutes down the tube…

I eventually solved the problem by uninstalling all Norton products, resigning to the fact that it appeared that I had wasted my money on the upgrade with the two year subscription. I considered disputing the credit card charge because I had nothing to show for it, but would that be upheld just because I could not find the answer to my problem in their “Knowledge Base” or the fact that I wouldn’t spend more money to call a person?

After approximately 2 hours on their site, I feel like I’ve certainly had an extensive tour of their customer support site. My overall impression is that Symantec doesn’t give a crap about its customers. It certainly does not want to interact with them in any way. They are all about pointing you to simple solutions which cost more money and provide hope that the problem would be fixed (like paying for a new subscription) Additionally, they use every opportunity to divert your attention from their lack of service by asking you for feedback and asking you to help them improve the answers. Unfortunately, this only wastes more of your time.

The most frustrating thing is that you wander around in this maze thinking that eventually you will find an escape hatch. Well they have one— if you are lucky enough to find the page where it gives you the information for calling a human (I’m assuming you could get a person on the phone). However, you have to invest another nice chunk of change. Let me tell you this goes over well after you have spent well over an hour trying to find the hatch. Some customer service questions to consider:

  • Why does Symantec/Norton tempt one to upgrade by using “no longer supported” when for all practical purposes their other products are not supported either? More money, perhaps?!?!?!
  • When I am getting the run-around and extremely crappy service, why in Hell would I even consider the notion to spend more money with Symantec/Norton?
  • Does Symantec/Norton really think their product is so special that it really has no competitors or suitable substitution products?
  • Does Symantec/Norton use their customer service boondoggle to manipulate you into spending more money? (Yes, I spent a considerable sum with them already. However, for a little more than the price of the phone call with them (which will likely be crappy) I can download another product.

All I can tell you is that after yesterday, I certainly feel like Symantec doesn’t care about their customers.

So Commuters… avoid this area… alternate routes include: ZoneLabs and other CNET Recommendations.

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