Ron V
03-12-2005, 12:16 PM
For some time I have held Symantec's Norton AntiVirus in pretty high regard as it does a pretty good job of keeping things at bay. It seemed to work better than McAfee. My opinion of their company changed considerably Thursday morning.
Earlier this week, I experienced trouble related to some Trojan downloader attachments. I've been busy the last couple of months working on my house, and I also thought that I had Norton set up to automatically update. It wasn't. The updates were over two months old. My fault, no biggie there. I updated Norton on the spot and it caught the attachments, but was unable to repair, unable to quarantine, AND unable to delete the files when prompted. My boss used to be our company's IT guy and I even asked him, he seemed perplexed as to why it wouldn't let me delete the files.
I also made a big mistake - I followed NORTON'S online directions that were posted for this particular virus, and I turned off my System Restore function before attempting to clean the virus (the premise being that the virus could be backed up). I should have tried to restore the system first to see if that solved the problem before doing such a foolish thing - Norton does not tell you to try this first. So, because I followed their directions, I now had no previous restore points to return to. To make a long story short, I used my Windows XP system restore disks that came with the computer and was able to do a standard restore without losing my documents and pictures. This takes about 50 times as long as using the restore function in your Start menu.
After I got it up and running again, I tried to update Norton's definitions (it had been knocked back to 2002 definitions during the system restoration) and it wouldn't update the virus list past July 2002. I dicked around on their website, and since it didn't seem to offer specific advice about this problem, I called their 800 number. This was the beginning of the end. I got hooked up with a lady at what is obviously a call center in sacred cow territory, if you know what I mean. After about 10 minutes just to get my name and address right, I nearly lost my temper while we tried to figure out my account number. The rep had no street English abilities and communication was next to impossible. After 15 minutes of accomplishing nothing except spelling my name and address out letter by letter (twice to get it right), she transferred me to a technical rep. He knew the English language better but had a heavier accent. All this time I can barely hear either of them because they are on the other side of the world.
I explained my problem, and he said, "We can't help you because you're running Norton AntiVirus 2002. It's out of date." I replied that the membership renewal which I PAID for is good until Sept. 2005, and that per my membership, I should be able to get updates on definitions through September, instead of cutting off at July 2002. His reply was, "You'll have to figure that out through our website, we don't offer any technical support to people with older versions of the software." The next few seconds were followed by a one-sided dialogue by yours truly, though I hung up on him before my Irish fuse completely reached my German percussion cap.
The idea of renewing a membership instead of buying a whole new package was to save some $$ and still get current definitions. As it turns out, I could have saved more money and gotten better results (see last paragraph). Regardless of what may or may not be in the agreement for tech support, the service was inexcusably poor. Not only bad business practice, but this trend of being so petty as to send customer service jobs overseas for the sake of saving a few bucks is the anchor pulling our country into the abyss. We pay money up front, and when there is a simple problem it doesn't get solved and all we get is some American-hating jerk who we can't communicate with, and yet he has one of OUR jobs. Symantec will be receiving a letter regarding this matter, and I've got $10 says they don't have the decency to respond, and even if they do they won't make things right with me.
I have since downloaded and updated AVG's free software, and it caught several attachments that Norton didn't catch even before I had restored the computer and lost the updates. My friend at work said he runs both AVG and Norton simultaneously and AVG always catches more, and is FREE.
Earlier this week, I experienced trouble related to some Trojan downloader attachments. I've been busy the last couple of months working on my house, and I also thought that I had Norton set up to automatically update. It wasn't. The updates were over two months old. My fault, no biggie there. I updated Norton on the spot and it caught the attachments, but was unable to repair, unable to quarantine, AND unable to delete the files when prompted. My boss used to be our company's IT guy and I even asked him, he seemed perplexed as to why it wouldn't let me delete the files.
I also made a big mistake - I followed NORTON'S online directions that were posted for this particular virus, and I turned off my System Restore function before attempting to clean the virus (the premise being that the virus could be backed up). I should have tried to restore the system first to see if that solved the problem before doing such a foolish thing - Norton does not tell you to try this first. So, because I followed their directions, I now had no previous restore points to return to. To make a long story short, I used my Windows XP system restore disks that came with the computer and was able to do a standard restore without losing my documents and pictures. This takes about 50 times as long as using the restore function in your Start menu.
After I got it up and running again, I tried to update Norton's definitions (it had been knocked back to 2002 definitions during the system restoration) and it wouldn't update the virus list past July 2002. I dicked around on their website, and since it didn't seem to offer specific advice about this problem, I called their 800 number. This was the beginning of the end. I got hooked up with a lady at what is obviously a call center in sacred cow territory, if you know what I mean. After about 10 minutes just to get my name and address right, I nearly lost my temper while we tried to figure out my account number. The rep had no street English abilities and communication was next to impossible. After 15 minutes of accomplishing nothing except spelling my name and address out letter by letter (twice to get it right), she transferred me to a technical rep. He knew the English language better but had a heavier accent. All this time I can barely hear either of them because they are on the other side of the world.
I explained my problem, and he said, "We can't help you because you're running Norton AntiVirus 2002. It's out of date." I replied that the membership renewal which I PAID for is good until Sept. 2005, and that per my membership, I should be able to get updates on definitions through September, instead of cutting off at July 2002. His reply was, "You'll have to figure that out through our website, we don't offer any technical support to people with older versions of the software." The next few seconds were followed by a one-sided dialogue by yours truly, though I hung up on him before my Irish fuse completely reached my German percussion cap.
The idea of renewing a membership instead of buying a whole new package was to save some $$ and still get current definitions. As it turns out, I could have saved more money and gotten better results (see last paragraph). Regardless of what may or may not be in the agreement for tech support, the service was inexcusably poor. Not only bad business practice, but this trend of being so petty as to send customer service jobs overseas for the sake of saving a few bucks is the anchor pulling our country into the abyss. We pay money up front, and when there is a simple problem it doesn't get solved and all we get is some American-hating jerk who we can't communicate with, and yet he has one of OUR jobs. Symantec will be receiving a letter regarding this matter, and I've got $10 says they don't have the decency to respond, and even if they do they won't make things right with me.
I have since downloaded and updated AVG's free software, and it caught several attachments that Norton didn't catch even before I had restored the computer and lost the updates. My friend at work said he runs both AVG and Norton simultaneously and AVG always catches more, and is FREE.