bobthebuilder
Symantec products fail - Service fail -Customer support fail
I contacted Symantec today about a few issues and features they have ignored for the last 10 products in all lines of Online Security software, some are quite alarming and some are 100% terrible practices and behaviors. (Ive been a customer with Symantec for last 12 years) None of their products supports any email clients but Outlook and this would have been excusable a few years back when Microsoft had pretty much no competition for email clients, for the last 5 years *at least) not so much. When asked Symantec reps make some bold and inaccurate claims, like Outlook is one of the safest email clients (its not and never has been) and that Outlook supports the Norton product rules. OK on that last one but still no excuse. There are many great and safe and opensource email clients out here, Thunderbird supports encryption which makes it infinitely more secure than Outlook ever was or will be, and being opensource Symantec has only to submit the support they desire directly. Alas they dont care about supporting any other clients otherwise it would have been done, this is alarming, because they have ignored all their users which dont use Outlook, they certainly have ignored my pleas over the years. Also, and I wonder why they have such feature. You can add email ports to e.g. Norton Security Premium, but if you try to add any POP3 ports or IMAP ports you are denied this, saying the ports are used for something else... This is false and when asked Symantec Reps just give you some excuse, which would be OK if you dont know any better, and thus also ignore you when you try to get a proper answer. A worrying malware like behavior though from their products is, during their product installation, they install Toolbars into all the browsers you have installed, this is great if you desire that protection but if you dont, you can only disable it, not remove toolbars. Ive asked Symantec if they could tell me what kinds of software they know about, that installs programs features without: A) Asking the user if they would like to install them (while being able to say no) B) Not allowing such program features to be 100% removed once they are discovered. At this stage the Symantec representative went silent and just not replied to the question and said nothing more at all. But the answer is spyware/adware/malware. OK no big deal (you say) since you can disable such features, the point is, you cant remove them, period.. There are other bones I could pick with Symantec regarding their products which seems to cause a great deal more grief and dont give you the peace of mind that Symantec is all so happy to charge large amounts of cash, year after year. Of such recent years (4), they automatically made a charge to my EXPIRED bank card (by making modifications to the card details held without notification), to renew a product I didnt want or use anymore and that they didnt even have any facility on your Norton/Symantec account to turn that recurrence OFF, it took me a month of dealing with my bank and Symatec to resolve and I was offered no real explanations why they would make automatic charges. After 12 years and the clear message you value nothing but money, I can assure you that by the end of my subscription I will never use or recommend your products for myself or my family, whom I manage their computers and security for, and for sure none of us will have nothing good to say about your company or products any longer. Shame on you Symantec. Shame on you!