I have been a loyal customer with Norton Antivirus products for YEARS. Literally so many years I can’t recall how many. A decade? More? I have no idea. I am also one of those over-moral people who doesn’t believe in gaming the system or doing anything like that, so I pay for my subscription and do the same for my wife’s computer or my kids. So I pay. I pay full price. FULL price. I pay full price because I’m a lazy consumer who pays the going rate for what I need, when I need it. I never bitch about price. I just buy what I want, when I want it.
I’ve never complained to anyone about the fact that Norton doesn’t let me turn off the auto updates that pop up a popup window in the middle of my writing projects, even though I have looked around for a way to turn them off and found forums dedicated to how much it pisses people off to not be able to ignore crap that is just supposed to run in the background like they paid for. I just let it interrupt me and break my creative writing train of thought from time to time to time, just stop what I am doing, ignore the fragile whisper of the fickle muse, and click off the pop up message instead, letting whatever train of thought I had going derail in a metallic din of crashing ideas that can be lost forever more. It's fine.
I never complained that it didn’t make auto-updating easy either, even though it just nags and nags and has multiple pop up screens that nag and nag and nag.
I admit I got tired of all that crap this last time and finally just thought, well, you know what, screw it. Money is tight, I haven’t had a virus or other infection in over six years (knock-on-wood), so I’m going to let that annoying thing expire. Maybe I’ll buy something else.
So my dead Norton antivirus pops up over and over to let me know that it’s expired and that my computer is vulnerable to viruses and that my identity is at stake and that little babies in third world countries are going to be sold into slavery because I haven’t renewed my subscription.
I tried to ignore all that, figuring it would just go away, but it won’t. And there is no way to turn that crap off without having a master’s degree in information technology from MIT, so, I had even resigned myself to spending the rest of my life being hounded by this unstoppable Norton antivirus renewal reminder.
But then I was paying my credit card bill today and saw that they had rammed through an “auto-update” despite my not wanting it.
At first I was annoyed, but I’m lazy and just want to drink beer. So I thought, “Fine, it’s worth $60 bucks just to get this crap out of my face.” Granted, it’s sort of extortion, but, you know, we are so victimized by big companies in this day and age, I’m kind of used to just rolling over and taking it. Usually they go fast and are done right away, and once I’m done crying and the pain lessens, I can get dressed and resume my citizenship.
So I opened up the renew screen and went to get my update that I was forced to buy. I saw this little message about how it auto-renews itself all magically or whatever, and was like, “Hmmm, that’s interesting. They took my money, but apparently forgot to deliver the product they jammed down my throat." Auto-money taking but not-so-auto-product delivery. That doesn’t seem fair.
So I poked around the program and their website a little, tried to make it auto-update manually, but, apparently even with assistance from me, the willing victim, auto-update will actually even NOT-automatically update.
So, I decided to call them. I dialed up the phone number on my credit card bill. It answered with this long thing about auto update being, well, automatic, and some other crap, then started in with the jazz, country, pop, classical, big band… eclectic spasm that is their on hold music. That was 57:26 minutes ago.
I’m still on hold. The music is so garbled it is burning my brain like someone just beer-bonged an entire gallon of Clorox into my skull. I want to die. I want to give up and just let them have my sixty bucks and not even have to give me the service. I want to sell babies into slavery. Anything just to not hear it anymore.
But I can’t. To let them win now would be wrong.
So I decided to start writing this while I wait. I smile an ironic, hate-filled snarl at my phone sitting here on speaker lying between my arms as I type every time they break from the horrendous, tinny garble of music to say, “We appreciate your patience. Please don’t hang up; we take calls in the order they are received.”
Gee, why in the fuck do you have that in there, I wonder, Norton?
OMG I am so goddamn pissed I can’t even wrap my head around it.
How can ANY company exist with customer service this F-ing horrible? Really. How does “capitalism” get like this. Where the hell are the F-ing “market forces” that are supposed to mitigate this shit?
1:01:32 now.
That’s fantastic. I just got a second colon added to my wait time.
Apparently destroying my first colon is not good enough.
sGoddamn Norton antivirus sucks so bad you can’t imagine!!!! Don’t ever buy it ever. If you have to choose between a virus that destroys your hard drive and costs you every photograph you ever took of your children growing up, all your videos and music, and the manuscripts to 50 best seller novels you just haven’t worked up the courage to send out yet…. DON’T choose Norton. Give up all the memories, music and manuscripts. No amount of sacrifice is worth the unbelievable contempt this company has for its customers. OMFG.
