A McAfee Marathon

All too often, getting support for a software product can turn into a grueling experience. In fact, just getting back to where you were before you bought the product can be a small triumph in itself, as one reader decided after a recent encounter with trying to install a McAfee security suite.

(By the way, this story marks the debut of my Gripe Line podcasts, which you can download here. So you can listen to this reader discuss his McAfee support experience and hear a few other comments my readers have phoned in. Give it a listen if you have a few minutes and let me know what you think.)

The reader’s run-in with McAfee struck me as interesting in light of the running discussion we’ve been having about paid support. The consensus there has been that customers should not have to pay for support just to get the product they purchased installed and functioning. But our reader found that’s not the way it works with McAfee.

His travails began when he purchased the latest VirusScan suite with anti-virus and firewall from McAfee. “I only bought it because McAfee told me my old version of VirusScan was out of date and I would no longer would be able to get virus signature updates for it.” The anti-virus program installed without a problem, but the firewall wouldn’t install because of conflicting files, which turned out to be from an older McAfee firewall from the Network Associates era. The reader spent several weeks trying on his own trying to identify and remove all the old firewall files, but the new version would still not install.

If he wanted to get the firewall part of the security suite up and running, the reader soon realized he had no real choice but to pay McAfee for a support incident. “It would seem they have NO free tech support at all,” the reader wrote. “You can try their e-mail, but it’s slow, especially if the problem is serious. And their knowledge base is next to useless. So you can pay per minute — I think it’s $2.95 –or you can buy one incident for $39 as I did.”

It turned out the reader would pay a lot more than that, just in stress alone, as that’s when the real horror show began. Just to summarize briefly, the first tech with whom he spoke walked him through removing the conflicting files, which unfortunately resulted in his Internet connection being disabled. Over the ensuing days, tech after tech promised to research the problem and get back to him, and of course never called back. “On the third evening, I attempted to phone them, but their phone system would not accept my PIN number, saying the incident had expired. So I could spend another $39 for another 48 hours of runaround if I wished.”

Well, the reader didn’t wish. Being without an Internet connection for days on end was costing him business, so he began calling McAfee customer service and sales, demanding that they get someone competent to help him. Even then he kept finding himself speaking to techs in far-flung parts of the world reading from scripts that they didn’t understand themselves. Finally, he just happened to get through to someone who could help him.

After five days of enormous persistence on his part, the reader finally had his Internet connection back and all McAfee files removed from his computer. “I’ve installed Bit Defender instead, as they appear to have 24X& free phone support,” the reader wrote. “McAfee refunded both my $39 for a tech support incident and my $39 for the software, so I guess you could say it was a happy ending. But they cost me days of lost business while I didn’t have connectivity and all those hours I had to spend on the phone. If I had just been able to speak to someone competent in the first place, it could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Indeed, perhaps that real moral of this story is there is no such thing as free support. Not only did the reader’s experience cost him time, think of what it cost McAfee – they lost a long-time customer, some good will, and all those hours, cheap as they may be, that McAfee must pay its overseas techs for their generally futile toil. When support turns into a grueling exercise, we all pay.

What support experiences do you have to share? Call my voice mail toll free at 1 888 875-7916 and leave your own gripe for us to hear. Or, post your comments on my website or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.

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