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McAfee To Pay For PC Repairs After Patch Fiasco

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the in-over-their-heads dept.

Barence writes "McAfee has offered to pay for the PC repairs of consumers affected by last week's faulty antivirus update. The problematic patch falsely identified the SVCHOST.EXE Windows file as a virus, causing PCs running Windows XP SP3 to crash or enter endless reboot cycles. In a blog post addressed to 'Home or Home Office Consumers,' the company offered to reimburse PC repair expenses, though there was a notable caveat. 'If you have already incurred costs to repair your PC as a result of this issue, we're committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses,' the company said. 'Reasonable expenses' has yet to be formally defined."

2 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Definately an by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Using the made-up "virii" as a plural for viruses makes you look like a retard.

  2. Re:I was thinking this would be a boon for me... by King_TJ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Heh.... Doing the right thing almost always *ensures* you'll make less money -- at least in the world of computing.

    I do on-site service too, and honestly, that's one reason I charge higher hourly rates than some of my competition. I've seen, first-hand, the way they leave a PC after they're supposedly done "cleaning up a spyware infection". Typically, they run a couple of their favorite programs on it, letting them run through and remove whatever they find, and they declare it "clean" - charging their fee and leaving.

    I actually take the time out to test a system after I clean a virus/spyware issue, and if I see any evidence that, say, pop-up windows are still occasionally coming up in Internet Explorer, or error boxes are displaying from files that got deleted but not removed from the registry entries referencing them? I go back in and fix all of that. If I can't get it to where I'm satisfied it's 100% back to normal, I sometimes back up all their documents, bookmarks/favorites, Outlook email store, autocomplete files, photos, music, and whatever else - wipe the drive, and rebuild the whole machine.

    Honestly, that stuff takes many HOURS to do right, and I can't really bill a person for all of the time that takes - so I just "cap" things at that point with what I think is a fair price, and "eat" the rest of it.

    If I was less honest, I'd do what the other guys do and just do a quick, easy automated "once over" of things, take my money and run. Chances are good they'll call back and pay a second or third time to go back and mess with the remaining junk that was left behind anyway. And if not, at least I wasn't stuck putting in hours of unpaid work to do the job right....

    But I dunno.... there's still something satisfying about knowing you did a job the best you could -- even if it usually goes relatively unappreciated.