A Gripe Line reader helps Symantec straighten out an e-mail discrepancy Greg wrote to the Gripe Line when he received a puzzling missive 30 days after he placed an order at the Symantec online store.“Thank you for placing your order with us,” the automated message read. “Unfortunately, we have not yet received your payment in the past 60 days.”Whoops! Where does the time go? Greg explained that he chose not to pay when he placed the order because he prefers not to give up credit card numbers online. He had planned to send a money order but hadn’t yet made up his mind if ordering direct was the best deal.“I found the boxed product at a local Office Max for about 15 percent less,” he explains. “But I’d not yet made a final decision. I guess Symantec made the decision for me because I foolishly thought that 60 days was approximately two months — not one.” Greg asks, “If they are counting 60 days per month and product activation is good for 365 days, what is one buying?”I forwarded Greg’s e-mail to Symantec and received an answer — and an apology — from a spokesman. “The order was not actually cancelled,” explained Louis, ‘though the e-mail indicating so went out after 30 days instead of 60. We would like to thank this consumer for reporting this discrepancy because this feedback allows Symantec to fix the issue.” Symantec then offered to add days to one of Greg’s Norton product subscriptions or send him the Norton Ghost 14.0 product as a thank you for taking to the time to alert them to the e-mail notification problem.But Greg says, “Thanks for the offer, but I have decided not to buy the product online. I appreciate that they will fix their e-mail notifications, though. This will do more to help their customers than anything else.”Got gripes? Send them to christina_tynan-wood@infoworld.com. Careers