Random Tale
I asked an old coworker if he remembered any good stories from our time as small network admins so I could share with Reddit. He said "Remember that time you came back to the shop bleeding and muddy and said you didn't want to talk about it? It's time to talk about it."
It began innocently enough. I received a call from one of the sales team about a new client who needed an initial assessment o
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#10 +20- Added on: Mar-03-2012 Added by: lindskitten -- Comments
Okay so I'm not tech support (not even close, although if anyone in the family has a computer issue I'm the one they talk to first) but this just sets a fire in my blood that makes me want to murder someone.
Basically, my mom switched emails in the last ~2 years when we moved to a new ISP. Her old email account was through our old ISP, and so her access to that account terminated when she moved to our new ISP, and she has a new account with them. Her antivirus coverage (which is through - ugh - Norton) didn't automatically transfer, of course, which is to be expected. No biggie.
So she goes to show me this email FWD today which I told her looked very suspicious and advised her to run a virus scan. When she went to go run said virus scan, she couldn't access the account because it was under her old email address and she didn't remember the password. Turns out she hasn't actively run a scan (only the background scan that runs automatically at 3 AM) since we switched ISPs. Since she can't access her old email account and that's how they get her password info to her, she thought the logical decision would be to change her email address associated with the account, which she did.
Then she logs in to Norton and it says she has 0 active days, when it should say she has 120 active days.
So anyway, she gets ahold of Norton customer support online who basically tells her that she's SOL, shouldn't have changed the email and can't reset her password, even though she knows all of the info associated with the account up to and including the credit card number. My mom asked if there were any solutions and he basically told her he could use the new email account and have her buy another time period, and have the old account (which, unbeknownst to her, was set to autorenew every year) deactivated and lapse. My mom told him that that was unacceptable and basically told him she'd be terminating service with them if that was the only option.
At this point I jumped in and mentioned to her that there were lots and lots of better, free software that would protect her just as well and probably better than Norton. My mom responded by saying that she "likes" Norton and doesn't want to move away from them, and had asked the guy if there were any other options available for her.
When confronted with the possibilty of losing a customer, he came back with (pharaphrased of course) "actually haha I'll just transfer those 120 days you had left of your anti virus protection over to your new email address, just need your credit card info again for the autorenewal", which my mother was much more pleased with, until he mentioned to her that she would have to purchase a full, new year of time on the new account in order for the 120 days to be transferred over.
After much hemming and hawing and quite a lot of protestation from me, my mom agreed and - as a bonus from Norton - he gave her (gasp) a whole 21 days of free coverage.
I can't decide what infuriates me more, my mom's refusal to believe either that a) an email she got from a friend might contain a virus (I initially had to show her that my own antivirus flagged it as suspicious before she would believe me), or b) that I'm not trying to scam her or some ridiculous bullshit, or c) the overall disgust for Norton customer service that I have right now. I hate that my mom is paying for this program and the best they can do for her is "well, our system is kind of skewed so that there is only one single way to retrieve your password, so if you don't have access to that way then you need to give us more money."
Guh, I'm sorry, this probably doesn't belong here and again, I'm really not techsavvy and this is REALLY FUCKING LONG but sitting through that was painful.
tl;dr my mom is computer illiterate and Norton sucks the devil's dick for kicks.
