I’d tell you more about my battles to buy and load anti-virus software from McAfee, but you probably wouldn’t believe them.
Here are some of the ‘highlights’.
One of my laptops had a McAfee anti-virus corporate product loaded on it, from when I used it whilst employed. This product eventually failed to update itself, which I suppose is fair enough. The laptop then caught a virus which took me some time to remove, and after it was removed it wouldn’t execute any .exe file until I eventually sorted that problem as well. Two-days worth of effort, essentially. My own fault for not noticing that the anti-virus was a corporate product and was not updating itself. No complaints, so far.
I then thought that I’d buy their home-user anti-virus software, to replace the corporate product. Two days later, having tried many different things, and having run the uninstall program for several hours, the home user product wouldn’t install because some remnants of the corporate product remained on the laptop and refused to be removed.
I’ve tried their virtual technician. I have several Session IDs, all of which failed to sort the problem. I tried the link from the virtual technician for further assistance – which was a 404!
I tried phoning a number which came with the product order confirmation, to discover that the most likely option would cost me £1 per minuted for technical assistance. £1 a minute to sort a product I’ve just paid for! No way.
I eventually got through to a customer services person, who was quite helpful, and who emailed me with something that I could try (which didn’t work), and then the same person suggested an online chat with one of their technicians. There was a 30 minute queue, but I waited in line for the chat help. He eventually couldn’t fix the problem, and said it was an issuue for their corporate side of things. The URL he gave me redirected me to my original starting point on their website.
I then had an hour-long GoToAssist session with another of their technical people, who remotely took over my laptop (fascinating to watch), and tried various things, but failed to install the product I’d bought. He said I wouldn’t be able to load the home user McAfee product, or in fact any other anti-virus product from anyone else, until the corporate stuff was removed. In the accompanying chat session, he started to call me ‘Sir’ and apologised three times.
He gave me a Reference number and advised me to call Customer Services and quote that number, which I did, but they said it was not the right number that he’d given me. They gave me a new number to phone, because they couldn’t redirect my call for some reason.
I called this number, and thought at this stage I was getting somewhere, as they promised that their corporate people would phone me back. I told them that I’d be out for the rest of that day, and could they phone before 12am the next day? Yes, they said.
Someone called Richard from McAfee corporate phoned at 4.30 pm on the day I said I’d be out in the afternoon. Half way through the message he left on my answerphone, he says he’s reading the case report for me and can see that I will be in before 12 am the next day, so he’ll phone me back first thing.
I waited in all morning, but there was no call. I got Richard’s number by dialing 1471 and phoned it back. It was answered by someone temping in their reception. Was I a corporate customer? No. Was I enquiring about a product? No. Eventually, she grasped what I wanted, but said there were several ‘Richards’ in corporate, but she’d pass the issue on to her supervisor, who would get back to me.
That’s as far as I’ve got, after nearly a week.
Update:
I waited in all day, but McAfee corporate didn’t phone back. I’ve tried tweeting George Kurtz, McAfee’s Chief Technology Officer.
What’s the point of me repeatedly phoning McAfee corporate if I can’t get through to the right person, and they don’t find the right person to phone me back.
McAfee references relevant to this saga:
“Your service request for this incident is 701194041″
Service Request # 701196411
Query # 702937631
Virtual Technician Session IDs: 33585070 and 33602247 and 33603348
Order # CS1003191900
One question I have is this – if you’re not retired, how can you possibly get through all these sagas? In any case, I’m retired, yes, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have things to do.
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