Symantec Software Products

Symantec Software Products

Symantec (Springfield),

555 International Way,

Springfield, OR 97477

tel +1 541 335 5000

tel +1 800 441 7234 (Customer Service)

fax +1 541 335 5100

fax +1 541 335 5020 (Customer Service)

fax +1 541 335 5028 (HR)

My complaint has to do with what I consider to be a high tech version of good old fashioned harassment. I purchased a computer with Symantec software pre-installed (package price) along with Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus which I purchased separately. Approximately 20 days ago pop-ups started appearing on my computer every time I powered it on and/or every 24 hours. The content of these pop-ups (from Symantec) stated my subscription was about to expire in "X" number of days. Two options are provided in this pop-up window, one is to renew which is pre-selected and recommended the other is to remind me later. Each time I selected later only temporarily stalled the inevitable, namely another pop-up appearing within 24 hours. Then on June 6th I spoke with someone named Rajes at Symantec's tech support dept. He informed me that there is a way to disable the pop-ups from occurring.

Over the course of 15 to 20 minutes he showed me how to select this option, this procedure in the end failed and I continued to receive these pop-ups. Then on June 7th while installing the latest version of Microsoft Activesync version 3.8 on my PC, the dreaded Symantec pop-up appeared stating I have 9 days left to renew. This occurred in the middle of the Activesync install and at the spilt second the pop-up appeared the install crashed along with my PC. When I tried to uninstall Activesync and re-install it I received this error message: "The log file 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Activesync\DeIsL1.isu' is not valid or the data has been corrupted. Uninstallation will not continue." When I try and re-install Activesync it stalls and then crashes my PC. I needed to have Activesync up and running prior to a business meeting scheduled for today. As it turns out this event sabotaged my meeting and has left me with a corrupted PC. Later that same day I also spoke with someone named James Gardipee from Symantec's Oregon, USA office who was unable to satisfactorily answer why Symantec allow their customers the option to choose "X" number of days in the future when they want to perform a LiveUpdate (Symantec online software update) yet they do not provide this as an option when it comes to renewing the subscription service.

Why the difference? In my opinion the reason is obvious, it is because Symantec do not make any money when their customers use LiveUpdate so it does not care whether the customer postpones the connection, however in the case of the subscription renewal Symantec hope to wear their customers down with daily harassing pop-ups until such a point in time that the customer gives in and renews. In my opinion this is harassment and to some degree blackmail plain and simple! Detailed in the email message below is the response I received back from Symantec in regards to my complaint. It is very misleading to say the least. Symantec's customer service representative Tarini Prasad states that the renewal reminders are part of the program itself, yet this person fails to acknowledge that the computer code that produces these reminders has nothing to do with the actual functioning of the program and was created for one purpose, sales of Symantec's product.

This representative goes on to state that it is meant as a friendly reminder; why then is there no option to simply acknowledge this reminder and then turn it off? Why is it not possible as in Symantec's LiveUpdate reminder to select "X" number of days when to be reminded again? Incidentally Symantec will more than likely claim the reason for the daily reminder is to protect their customers from a virus or hacker etc. yet the fact remains that failure to update via their LiveUpdate service is just as risky as failing to renew the subscription. As things stand on the recommendation of the computer specialist from the store I purchased the Symantec products from (Mr. Dave Woodsworth the manager of the London Drugs Computer Dept. in Richmond British Columbia (3200, 11666 Steveston Highway, phone: 604-448-9241) I am going to have to re-format my PC and re-install everything.

This will take me a full day to complete. Prior to this I tried using Windows XP's System Restore to take me back to a checkpoint before this incident (i.e. the Microsoft ActiveSync and PC crash) which failed. On the recommendation of this computer specialist I also searched on Microsoft's tech support website to see if the error message detailed above had been identified and a solution provided, unfortunately this search failed to produce any results and as mentioned above I am going to have to re-format my PC. In my opinion Symantec is as bad as a common spammer for designing their software this way. Symantec has no right to install extra code on their customers computers that has nothing to do with the product's parameters, yet this is what has been done. At no time prior to my purchase of this product was I forewarned as to what will happen towards the end of the subscription service. What is particularly distasteful is the fact that Symantec profited from the original sale of their product, but this isn't good enough, they have to resort to harassing their customer into renewing.

Sincerely,

Stephen Click this link to e-mail the message author: Email User