Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Yeah, Brother, I Been There.

Lee Goldberg liveblogs his hellish experience with Norton tech support, " Minute by Agonizing Minute".

I took Norton AV off the laptop about a week ago and installed avast! which is free and which so far works great. The computer now boots up in half the time, runs faster, and doesn't heat up nearly as badly.

Norton: The anti-virus software that acts like a virus!

And don't even get me started on McAfee, which refused to install an update on my home machine because I also had Spybot S & D installed. So McAfee (which has often missed stuff that Spybot caught) gets kicked to the curb as well.

8 comments:

David said...

I always liked AVG, but wasn't able to put it on this computer because it has an older version of Roxio what was probably installed with the CD burner. (IOW, I'd have to pay to upgrade something I rarely use in order to be able to use a free AV program. I don't think so.)

charlie stella said...

Me and Lee disagree about as much as you and me Dusty but I do feel his pain. My website still has me living in Brooklyn and not New Jersey (where I actually live), because Powwebb has customer service somewhere in the great nation of India and we haven't been able to resolve anything with them for the last 6 months (altough my wife did make contact today with a nice Indian lady named "Jane" -- yeah, right).

Before I was laid off at an outsourced firm, I used to tell whomever I was talking to in India (Joe, Dave, Frank, no doubt) the following: "Listen, buddy, you're torturing me. I can't understand a fuckin' word you're saying. Call back after I leave."

RR Donnelly was the American firm that provided the outsourcing. Pieces of shit that they are (RR Donnelly) for taking American jobs and giving them away; then cutting back on all the benefits of those left behind in the U.S. I guess their goal is to pay American workers the same as whatever they're paying Indian workers.

Anonymous said...

Norton: Shit software just like Adobe is anymore.

McAfee: Great in a corporate environment. Screw the consumer.

Avast: That and Windows Firewall or OSX are all you'll ever need.

Trust me. I do this for a living.

Unknown said...

Norton and MacAfee hasn't been used in this household for years. We've been with Panda for about four years, and the only complaint is that it may be too protective. It's fine otherwise.

JD Rhoades said...

my wife did make contact today with a nice Indian lady named "Jane"

Credit where credit is due: one of the few pleasant experiences I've had with phone tech support was with Belkin when I had trouble with my wireless router. But I cracked up when a guy came on who sounded like Apu from "The Simpsons" and told me his name was "Eric." I had exactly the reaction you describe: "yeah, right." But he did show me how to fix the problem in about five minutes.

Dell, on the other hand, was a goddamn Kafkaesque nightmare. The son of a bitch refused to deviate from the script, even when I told him "I did that already, I did that already," about ten times. Assholes. I'll never get another Dell again, I don't care how cheap they are.

Anonymous said...

A little disclosure about Indian call centers.

Originally, this was a great idea. But I was talking to one of our development managers (who is from India, but lives here in the Midwest and absolutely can't stand calling these places.)

Basically, it's the 1990's all over again in India. They hire these kids right out of high school because it's hard to get into college in India. The money's good even if the hours are odd. But because everyone and his cousin wants in on the call center boom, you go from high-end companies like Tata and HSBC running their own call centers with, yanno, people who actually know what they're talking about to Ed's Tech Support, Debt Resolution, and Tire & Lube.

So you get "Frank" (whose real name is Sanjay), who is working third shift while you're still in daylight hours. So you get a poorly trained kid with a fake name talking to angry foreigners in the middle of the night to solve your problem.

Eventually, call centers will move to another country itching for a tech boom, and India will have its own version of the dotcom collapse.

And I suspect we'll all miss "Frank".

Gerard Saylor said...

I talked some some Indian dude about something (I don't recall what) business related. After we had the business completed I asked him where he was from and we had a nice conversation about Goa, India. It does sound like a great place to visit.

charlie stella said...

The problem is "our fucking jobs" are visiting Goa, Chennai, etc., before AND AFTER we bailed these bastards out (CITIBANK, AIG, et al) ...

And the American companies here jumping on the bandwagon (facilitating this bullshit--like RR Donnelly) seem to enjoy taking our benefits away.

Good idea? We have our own unemployment problems in the U.S., we don't need India's help.