I started using Norton’s Antivirus products about a decade ago. Partly through laziness, I stuck with them, upgrading every few years until I reached Internet Security 2005. I bought a licence for this product to cover two computers, mine and Mrs Longrider’s. When the annual subscription expired, I renewed it rather than upgrade. Being short of a few bob, I felt this the most cost effective option.
We had to rebuild one of the machines recently. When doing this, I discovered that my subscription for Internet Security covering the remainder of the year was no longer valid. The original key sent by email was valid for one week only and that was that. I contacted technical support but received a non-committal reply that managed to completely miss the point of my original request:
Mark, I would like to inform you that the product purchased through the order number ******** is a subscription renewal thus you cannot download and install it because when you renew your subscription, you are extending your access to our LiveUpdate servers for another year. This renewal is a service, and does not include a new version of the program itself.
I wasn’t asking for a new version of the programme, I was asking for a key that enabled my subscription to continue working for the remainder of the period for which I had paid.
I rarely, if ever, respond to surveys. However, Symantec emailed a request for customer feedback. Generally, I don’t bother. If I say nothing then they may conclude that I am satisfied. If not, I let them know. On this occasion, I let them know.
I then removed Norton Internet Security from both machines and downloaded AVG’s free antivirus software and installed that. The first thing we noticed is that both computers are that much faster loading…