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Symantec Support Gone Rogue?

Posted by Soulskill on from the less-than-helpful dept.

DigitalDame2 writes "PCMag Security Analyst Neil Rubenking has always praised Symantec's tech support. Lately, though, a number of readers have reported problems with chat support, so he investigated. Rubenking was trying to install Norton 360 version 3.0 on a malware-infested system when the computer crashed with a blue screen error. He connected with Symantec tech support and was told that they could fix the problem, but for a fee of $100! (Here is the transcript and screen-captures of the chat.) Even more, Symantec support suggested that he use a malware-removal tool that wasn't even made by Symantec."

2 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Professional services cost money by Alereon · · Score: 5, Informative

    The computer was simply too infected to allow the Symantec software to install. This is not an abnormal occurrence. Symantec offered to have an engineer remotely access the system and clean it, which naturally costs money, since you're paying for a person's time to fix your computer, in addition to the license for the software. Symantec can't guarantee that your Windows installation isn't too badly damaged to allow their software to install, and they just offered an alternative to telling him to take the computer to be serviced. This is a non-story.

    1. Re:Professional services cost money by cduffy · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you RTFA, what he needed to run at the point when he was being upsold on a services package (and told that no other option was available) was a freely-available utility to remove previously-installed Symantec tools.

      Moreover, Symantec's management acknowledged that they were in the wrong, and indicated they would be addressing this -- hardly indicative of the no-fault scenario you proclaim.