February 5, 2014

What Anti-Virus Software Do you use? A phone call saved me $35!

Geeze, I'm full of questions lately.

One of the annual expenses that we use our tax return money for is to pay for anti-virus software.

We use Norton 360.  It just automatically renewed, which I hate and I thought that I turned the automatic renewal off but apparently not.  The price tag: $85.19 for 1 year.  I went to the Norton website, to see how much money I saved through the automatic renewal. Cause, you know, I should save something for letting them just charge my credit card when they want to.  I was surprised to see Norton 360 on sale for $49.99.  So why did they charge my credit card $85.19?

After almost 20 minutes on hold, I finally spoke to a very nice customer service rep and she refunded my credit card $35.  Yay for me!  I almost didn't bother.  Sometimes, I get so tired of dealing with companies and customer service just to get them to do what is right.  I expected some excuse from them so they wouldn't have to give me the discounted price, but there was a renewal button right on the website under the $49.99 price so I had to try. 

I was very impressed with how this issue was handled.  There were no arguments or excuses.  She just asked what website I saw that price at and told me she would be refunding the difference. (hmmm... I wonder if there's a website out there with an even lower price).

How many people just let the automatic renewal go through without checking the price?  I almost did.  In fact if I hadn't thought to right this post, I never would have checked to see if I saved any money.

I'm happy enough with Norton.  We haven't had any major viruses.  We had gotten a re-direct virus with google chrome that was a pain to get rid of.  It seemed like if it got too bad,  I could run Norton Power Eraser and it would be better for a while and then come back.  Lately though, it hasn't been doing it so maybe Norton figured out a permanent fix.  And now that I've had this experience with the customer service at Norton, I am a little happier.  $35 Happier! :)

I had a computer once that I would just bounce around from free trial to free trial and it really screwed up my computer.  After that I started using Norton because that's what my mom always bought. So I'm curious to see what products others would recommend. 

What do you use?

4 comments:

  1. Good for you for calling them! I agree, dealing with customer service can be a pain. We use Norton too. But we just buy the box every year (on sale). This way we never spend more than $50.

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  2. I've never paid for AV... I rarely run one, but recently I got one for free (cant even tell you the name, to be honest, and it's off half the time), but when that's not running, I normally have AVG, Avast or Comodo, all of which are free. That redirect issue is very annoying. I've had it once, and managed to eradicate it. Try running malware bytes and see if that helps some.
    (PS, I am also very biased against Norton. Hate, hate, hate them. Been hating them since the 90's! Their AV sucks. The only few times my computer has fallen to a virus, Norton was running. They're also a pushy pain to fully uninstall, and very spiteful when you do uninstall... lots of problems left in their wake.)

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  3. People almost always save money just by making a phone call and yet we postpone it for so long because of the hassle--when really its only about 15 minutes of your life! I have no clue what we use since I leave the tech stuff to my husband, but I save money every year by checking on our phones and cable bills

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  4. I have AVAVT free on all the computers at work and 1 windows computer at home. Never had a problem and it doesn't run in the background slowing down the oracles sir like norton, viper and a few others do.

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