Complaint Review: Symantec

When a buy a product, especially software, I require it to do exactly what it says on the box and in the manuals. symantec since it has grown during the years has in fact gotten lazy and sloppy and I consider them with what follows to be from one of the once best to one of the worst virus software protection companies. Their software they sell is incomplete to the point it leaves computers vulnerable, and instead of completing it, they try selling you another version with more security holes and other incomplete problems which dont even fix the problems in the first place. Their tech support is some foreigh country who know nothing about computers except to read to their customers from some source of fixes or god knows what to problems that customers arent even calling for. I swear, I felt like I was playing a MMorpg in the past where a GM would send you a self macroed message to a problem you didnt even page with. I have written symantec many ocasions, they ignored all email and mail. They still think their on the top of the market for virus software.

Guess what, theirs a few better companies in near future rearing their heads with better, and from what I seen, will blow them away. They need to concentrate on helping their customers, not ripping them off becasue what they do now will effect themselves in the future. Ok, now for the problem:

My wife, who likes playing internet games got hit with something from the website. It was only cought becasue it opened a command window and closed it real fast, but was enough to tell you something was wrong. I checked the system with Norton Antivirus 2005 which I bought for her 2 months ago. It picked up a few things on the hard drive but not in memory. Using Task Manager I closed 7 offending files, deleted them to watch them re-write themselves back. Basically, she had something on her computer which opened up ports to load older viruses and torjans which the software was only picking up a few, not all. (Mind you, theres a lot of new things out daily, and understand its hard to keep up, but symantec doesnt even stay in network like other companies are and fall way behind, not to mention they dont even bother trying to make their own definations but wait for others to to reform it to their software which is why they are almost last to update their definations then anyone else in the industry)

Anyways, back to the problem. I took her drive and scanned it with another program which picked up a lot more then symantec's did. Even had the drive checked on a clean machine with NUAV2005 and it didnt pick anything up so it wasnt the fact her drive was infected. I contacted tech support, who had me run a web based check which again didnt pick up anything, yet their definately way. They gave links to tools on how to copy boot records and send in the infected files. Nuav2005 was suppose to have a feature for sending infected files in. It even wanted files that were infected but wernt beingpicked up by its own software but worse, it wouldnt sent it in. Why? Becasue the part thats suppose to send it in wasnt complete. The software they have on their site was written for DOS for getting boot records, didnt work either and asking the techs from out of the country just got me responces on how to scan for viruses. I spoke to 5 techs, each one saying to them "I dont want to scan my system, I want to get the boot record and send it in, and neither the built in program or the ones on the website work. How can I do this?" Each one by rote replied by giving directions on scanning the computer, to giving urls to buying the product I already bought.
TIll this date symantec has ignored all emails regarding the problem except to say "Buy 2006, it has the fix for what 2005 doesnt have" Buy 2006? I just bought 2005 from them and if they think Im shelling out more money for another product when the one I just bought was suppose to come with it they can forget it. At this time, I changed the software from symantec Norton Antivirus 2005 to what Im using. WIlling to bet well be seeing symantec's products in the bargin bins soon enough.

Scott
Sanbruno, California
U.S.A.