Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Unreasonable Companies?

New submitter Ash-Fox writes: I recently ran into troubles trying to get reasonable quality of support from an anti-virus vendor, where they are attempting to cop-out of providing any reasonable support and then refusing to offer refunds under the guise of their EULA does not allow it. However, their EULA does not implicitly say that they cannot provide refunds in other circumstances, as the support tries to imply, and further living in Europe (as is the anti-virus headquarters), this EULA for sales is only valid if that was provided as the terms of sales contract, which it was not. How do other Slashdotters look to address companies that behave poorly and seek to only provide at best their minimum legal requirements?

Comments

monopolies

[guygo]

We give them monopolies over public utilities.

Re:monopolies

[tripleevenfall]

And then we accept political donations from them in order to permit their monopolies to persist.

"living in Europe"

[Chmarr]

1) Report them to the Better Business Bureau
2) Report them to the Attorney General's Office
3) File a lawsuit, either in small claims court or regular court, as appropriate

Alas, he spoke the magick words "living in Europe".

Re:"living in Europe"

[tlhIngan]

Alas, he spoke the magick words "living in Europe".

That's even better - it means he just has to file a complaint under the Sale of Goods Act or equivalent enforcement agency which actually has teeth to force the company to respond.

Re:"living in Europe"

[aphelion_rock]

(1) Name and Shame on Social media
(2) Name and Shame on Slashdot
(3) Assuming you paid by credit card - go through the process of getting the transaction reversed

Re:"living in Europe"

[ZipK]

I complained about a flat soda that was in one of my 12 packs on twitter... No response. :(

You should stop buying Every Twelfth Can is Flat brand soda.

try this

[JustNiz]

I'd phone them, make sure you're talking to someone a few levels up not just a tier-1 monkey, tell them your story and ask them nicely for a refund, and tell them that if they still say no then you have no option but to take them to small claims court and will also smear their name all over the internet.

Re:try this

[msauve]

"Not even possible if they're not in the same state."

From the summary - "...living in Europe...". As imperialistic as the US is, and as parochial as many of it's citizens are, I'm pretty sure there aren't any "states" involved in this situation. And if you're using "state" to refer to a European nation's political subdivisions, it appears you're wrong.

Re:try this

[freeze128]

I appreciate your advice, and offer a little story of my own:

I pay $50 a month for an assigned parking space in my apartment's underground garage. Several years ago, the building management painted all the walls in the garage, and stenciled stall numbers for each stall... Except for mine, and 3 adjacent stalls. I don't know why they omitted the stall number for just those few. Maybe they ran out of paint, and then just forgot to follow up.

I made a couple of requests to the rental office to have the numbers placed on my stall, but to no avail. The stalls were unnumbered for about a year.

One night, I arrive home, pull into my garage, and find another car (it was the first of the month - a brand new tenant) parked in my stall. I wrote up an official sounding note, making it look like it came from the building management company, notifying the offending car owner that they were illegally parked in stall #20, and that their license plate number has been recorded, and they will be fined $50. Any questions, ask at the rental office.

Sadly, I wasn't present in the office when that new tenant tried to explain to the building management staff that the stall wasn't even numbered. The next day, the remaining stalls (including mine) were stenciled with proper numbers. That's all I ever wanted anyway!

THE MORAL OF THE STORY: If you ask nicely, and nothing gets done, use their own customers against them.

Re:try this

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Not sure if my experience is typical or not I had a fairly good experience when dealing with the US Federal Consumer Protection Bureau (CFPB), MN Department of Commerce, and MN State Attorney General's Office when I was dealing with a shit bag debt collection company and I gather now that all 3 agencies now have an open investigation into them.

The debt collection company was trying to collect a student loan debt from someone who only shared my first name. The collection company started calling and when ever I would answer there wouldn't be anyone on the line. When they would call caller ID would always list the caller as "Toll Free Call" and when looking up the number online I didn't see anything indicating who was calling. When I would answer the phone I would inform them that this is harassment, that they have been told previously to never contact me ever and that I am informing them to never contact me again. I started recording the calls (video recording) and after having them call me multiple times in the same day and being told the line above. After about a week of this and after the day when they called me 4 times and were told I filed a complaint with the MN State Attorney General seeking relief and providing what limited information I had received. A few days later the Attorney General's Office responded and provided detailed information on the company and information on who else I should be filing a complaint about a shit bag debt collection company. Additionally the Attorney General's Office had sent a demand to the company indicating that they were to no longer contact me that also demanded that they respond to an inquery now started by the Attorney General's Office.

So at that point I filed complaints with the CFPB and MN Department of Commerce. A day later I received confirmation that the CFPB had contacted the debt collector and that they were to no longer contact me by phone. Unfortunately the debt collection company disregarded this and continued to call for a couple of more days. This caused me to file additional complaints with the CFPB and MN Department of commerce about their continued harassment at this point as well as forwarding all of this information to the Attorney General's Office. A bit later I get a response through the CFPB from the debt collector in which they provided all of the information they had on the loan including the loan application (this included mother's maiden name, previous addresses current addresses, employer at the time, wage information, social security number, banking information), copy of the person's drivers license, copy of their social security card, and a letter directed to me informing me that I had 7 days to to work out payment details otherwise they would be suing me and seizing my assets. The problem is that the information I provided to the CFPB clearly demonstrated that I was not the actual owner of this debt, which they could have figured out from public records even before hand having never been in the states where the person who the debt belonged to, not ever having a drivers license from that state, having a different middle and last name, having a different birth date (over 15 years different), and attending a different school. In their letter they also indicated that they had no record of me ever answering the phone let alone being told to never call me as well as stating that they never called me after being contacted by the CFPB.

I responded to their letter with one of my own informing them that any attempt to collect this debt from me by them or any other company I will view as an attempt to defraud me and that I would also consider them a co-conspirator in the action and would be filing a criminal complaint. I explained to them that they had broken the law several times including their outright lies and that I had recorded a number of their calls and can provide evidence showing that I had told them multiple times to never contact me in the same day as well as provide evidence of them continuing to call me after being to

Re:try this

[Kinthelt]

Dell is awful when it comes to reasonability.

The 3D card on my out-of-warranty Alienware laptop died. Okay, I figured I'd just go onto Dell's web site and buy a replacement. Strangely enough, there wasn't one. I called them up, and they said that they were available, but I'd have to pay for a technician to come over and replace it. Or, I'd have to ship my laptop to Florida. They refused to sell the card by itself.

So I was gonna rant about your lack of detail

[redmid17]

Then I read your imgur post and have this to tell you:

1. It's not built-in functionality

2. It's in beta (as of 8/10/2016) - Bash on Ubuntu on Windows && Installation Guide. This is only available to a specific subset of Windows users (eg Windows Insiders Program).

Disclaimer: "This is the first release of Bash on Windows and it is branded "beta" deliberately - it's not yet complete! You should expect many things to work and for some things to fail! We greatly appreciate you using Bash on Windows and helping us identify the issues we need to fix in order to deliver a great experience."

You can't expect 100% compatibility with something still in beta. There are broken things and things that will be changed. Expecting Avast to work with it right now or refund you for a beta-product is unreasonable. Maybe common handles things differently than civil law in this case. I know Europe has better consumer protections in many many ways than the US, but I can't see where anyone would reasonably expect a refund or extensive support for a beta add-in when the product works perfectly with production level software (aka Win 10).

customer retention specialist != technical support

[lusid1]

That's really the central problem from what you've posted. You need technical support so a ticket can get opened in whatever 3rd world coding farm they have outsourced the product to. Seeing that your support request is being handling by someone who's title says "customer retention" means you will never get a refund, and your issue will never be resolved. That's just not what they are there to do. On the org chart they probably roll up to the sales group.

Cut your losses and move on.

I never have this problem

[jdavidb]

I recently ran into troubles trying to get reasonable quality of support from an anti-virus vendor

rotfl, I can't imagine getting much support at all for that.

How do other Slashdotters look to address companies that behave poorly and seek to only provide at best their minimum legal requirements?

I don't buy proprietary software.

Not doing business, and public posting

[phorm]

Not doing business with them again is a start, but honestly one of the things I've found is that some businesses who do some *amazingly* bad support/PR, also seem to have public walls on their Facebook pages. I've had decent luck getting some response from businesses by posting a detailed summary of my issues on their wall.

Cancellations, threats and legal action

[guruevi]

Pretty much in that order:
- You cancel whatever service you have with them so they get no further money if you can legally do so.
- You threaten them with cancellation, non-renewal or no further sales - most smaller companies will bend over backwards to maintain clients
- You threaten with social pressure (trade groups, other departments or companies you have ties with, social media)
- You go for legal action. In European countries this is a heck of a lot easier as consumer protections are baked into the law even if you have contracts saying otherwise. In the US you have fewer protections but small claims is often viable for small companies even if you can't recover the whole sum. If you have a legal team staffed, talk to them about your options but unless you do jury trials are usually too expensive unless you get a class action going.

Don't EVER use social media or other publishing options to outline issues you have with a company. It's too easy for a big company to bully you with lawsuits and you may say something that's not strictly true or legal or even shows you violated a clause or your contract. All communications from your company should go through a lawyer.

Mention their name! Avast! Dispute the charge.

[www.sorehands.com]

Don't mention "reasonable quality of support from an anti-virus vendor" instead identify them by name and repeat it often!

I don't know if your credi card or local provides it, but here in the USA, you can dispute quality of product if it is purchased in your state or within 50 miles of home. Your home computer is within 50 miles of home.

But, when disputing the charge make it simple, "when I install it, it breaks my computer." When I remove it, it works perfectly."

Debt collectors don't like robo calls either...

[__aaclcg7560]

When I was out of work for two years (2009-2010) and before I filed for a Chapter Seven bankruptcy, my credit card debt got sold to three consecutive debt collection agencies. The first two responded well when I pointed out to the notes that indicated I was filing for bankruptcy and ceased taking action against me. The third one did not. So I played hardball by calling their phone line every minute. After 15 minutes of repeated calls that tied up their phone line (and deprived them of earning money), they took a look at the notes about filing bankruptcy and ceased taking action against me. Bullies don't like being on the receiving end.

I Don't.

[brian.stinar]

You are talking about somewhere between $50-$100, right? You walk away from it, and realize that your time could (HOPEFULLY?) be better spent on more productive things.

When a small store gave me incorrect change, and was unpleasant about the correction of that error, I walked away and never came back. Anything else would have not been worth my time. Unless you want to turn this into a hobby, I suggest you take a similar approach. Whenever anyone asks me about that store, I tell them a similar story, and advise them to go to a different store. That alone cost the store far more than when they jacked from me on my change. It was the store owner that robbed me.

Step1 NAME THEM

[Lumpy]

All of these people protecting these bad companies in these posts are insane.

Freaking Name the company you are having problems with. What the hell is wrong with people protecting companies that screw them?

Re:Step1 NAME THEM

[NotAPK]

It's fear.

They are worried the company will come down hard on them in some way.

Land of the free indeed...

By being reasonable

[linuxgurugamer]

I start by being reasonable. That includes giving them enough time and opportunities to understand the problem, and then work on a fix. I also don't expect commercial products to be compatible with beta releases. How in the world can they even provide support for something that is under development?

Be nice, switch vendors, publicity, lawyer.

[SeattleLawGuy]

1. Be nice to them. Occasionally this gets you better service.
2. Know what your agreement says. Insist on following it.
3. Plan to switch vendors. At least be ready to. If a problem repeats itself or a second one arises, pull the trigger.
4. Publicity. Parent is right; a lot of places will have issues on their public wall or twitter feed get elevated support. Many of these places will only pretend to elevate support in public and then will ignore you, but sometimes they actually follow through.
5. Call a lawyer. Even just a quick letter from a lawyer often makes a difference.

It is a known issue with AV software

[Ecuador]

This is a known issue and is being worked on by the actual Avast! support : https://forum.avast.com/index....
I don't know how the OP submitted the ticket, but it went to a "retention specialist" who probably thought he was trying to use it on Ubuntu (at least that's what I understand from the first email reply). And it is not just Avast!, see for example similar problems with Kaspersky: https://github.com/Microsoft/B... and more: https://github.com/Microsoft/B...

Re:You aren't reasonable

[Ash-Fox]

It has been my experience that people who use the word reasonable, and use it a lot like you did, are the most unreasonable people on the planet. If you've made demands that you "feel" are "reasonable"

You know what the funny thing is? If the person had actually even checked their internal staff or checked their own support forums, they would have found it was being worked on and a fix was pending. That would have been enough to resolve the ticket with me, their support person was lazy and didn't even bother checking throughout the entire ticket, then their supervisor, right at the end did the same.

So unreasonable of me to expect a company that sells a security solution to provide some information on the certainty on supporting of features! Especially when I state out my assumptions in the following e-mail blatantly so they can correct them if I'm wrong. But no, the "customer retention specialist" some how managed to miss that again? I don't buy it, it was terrible support.