Symantec's renewal obfuscation

Lincoln Russell 15 Dec, 2007 at 8:52pm ET Article published in Tech

Today I got an e-mail saying my mom’s Norton subscription would auto-renew at the end of the year for $40. I forwarded it to her so she would be aware of this. I got an e-mail back from her saying that, just today, Norton Antivirus popped up a notice about this and prompted her to (and confused her enough to) buy the upgraded version.

Now, she has no idea if she will get charged again for the renewal despite the upgrade (that she doesn’t need) having been ordered. This has her quite understandably frustrated and doesn’t know how to get the answers she needs.

Symantec could use a little user-experience help, it seems.

Comments

16 Dec 2007 ~ 12:24am Thelemech ...and perhaps some work in the programming department?!?
16 Dec 2007 ~ 9:12am the_technocrat you should see their corporate program - they share the user contracts with third parties, it seems. I bought thru CDW, and CDW lets me know when the contract is up and it's time to renew. Great.

...except about 90,000 other Joe-bob software vendors start calling, writing and emailing me up to 3 months before with notices that it's going to expire, and I need to renew "NOWS!" (through them, of course)
16 Dec 2007 ~ 2:45pm RADA Main reason I use Avast anti-virus protection.

AVG, Avast, never had a problem with the free ones, no SPAM, no confusing contracts, oh, no viruses either....
16 Dec 2007 ~ 3:08pm SPIKE09 I'm with RADA well not literally with him but AVG and AVAST are my preferred av solutions add some anti malware and a decent free firewall. It still has a smaller footprint than NIS
16 Dec 2007 ~ 3:25pm primesuspect Shame on you for letting your parents use the horrible, system-wrecking mess that is Norton. :shakehead

Get them off that **** ASAP and get them onto something useful.
17 Dec 2007 ~ 9:02pm CB Indeed. I tell my clients and students that they need to delete whatever crap they already have and get Avast! (or AVG if they're on Vista). It's free and better.
18 Dec 2007 ~ 6:05pm RADA

CB Droege wrote:

Indeed. I tell my clients and students that they need to delete whatever crap they already have and get Avast! (or AVG if they're on Vista). It's free and better.

My fiance has the latest Ver. of Avast on her HP Lappy, w/ Vista HP. Haven't had any problems
18 Dec 2007 ~ 8:22pm CB Okay. I had heard here that Avast was not working for Vista yet, and hadn't heard otherwise since. I guess I can stop telling Vista users to use AVG