I was having some issues with Norton Antivirus (NAV) and felt I needed to talk to their tech support staff. I didn’t have a phone number, so I called toll-free directory assistance (800-555-1212); the number listed for NAV was 800-234-2732.
I called this and got a rather unexpected intro message: “Hello, you’ve reached the computer support line, a service of Computer Support USA. We provide technical support for a range of computer software and hardware. We are not licensed by any manufacturer. The cost is $3.50/minute. If you’d like to pay by credit card, please press 1.”
Not being excited about giving my credit card info to a strange recording, I pressed 2 for “I Have no credit card.” A friendly sounding human was soon on the line. I asked whether this was tech support for NAV: “Yes, this is the tech support department - how can I help you?”
I asked him to confirm that I’d reached Symantec Corporation, manufacturers of NAV. He said “Yes, we do tech support for all Norton products. May I have your credit card number?”
I told him this wasn’t sounding like an honest approach - could he confirm that I’d reached the tech support line provided by Symantec? After further evasions I told him I wasn’t interested in further conversation and hung up.
Anyone familiar with this? Is it a scam, or has Symantec farmed out its tech support? If a scam, how is it that directory assistance supplies a phone number not affiliated with the company whose phone number is requested?
Their Web site says tech support by phone for NAV is $29.95 (!). The only way to get the phone number, though, is to fill out some form, which I don’t want to do.
“Scam” is such a harsh word. Let’s say there are third-party service providers that may or may not be authorized to support Norton’s AV products. While they are clearly NOT Norton, that doesn’t mean they can’t fix your problem. I think it is misleading for them to appear as if they are Norton, but you asked the right questions so when you got evasive answers that should have been your red flag to hang up. Whether they could have helped you or not is another question. They weren’t necessarilly a scam… but they could have been.
Symantec seems very protective of providing a phone number. To get a tech support phone number, you have to go through some steps first, then finally you have to apply to get the phone number, even though they charge you $29.95 per incident!!
The phone number on the web site is (800) 927-3991
As I’ve mentioned before on the boards, I work for Symantec (Norton)* - I sell their corporate solutions, so I can’t help you with a retail NAV product issue. But I can tell you that number (800-234-2732) did not come up on a search of our internal numbers. It is very likely a third-party reseller that is overstepping their bounds in representing themselves as Symantec support - or worse, some scam artist looking for credit card numbers. In fact, I am forwarding their number to the appropriate teams to ensure that no misrepresentation is occurring.
Directory assistance may have given you this number because the business entity “Computer Support USA” may have registered an 800 number under the dba alias of “Norton AntiVirus”, or “NAV Computing”, or something along those lines, while Symantec does not actually do business as “Norton AntiVirus” so we would not show up in the directory under such a query. It’s kind of a low-tech version of domain-name squatting, and really sneaky in my book.
Either Bongmaster’s or Cookingwithgas’ recommendations above will get you to phone support. As has been mentioned - and as with most major AV vendors - post-installation phone support is fee-based. I can say that we offer free email support, so you should be able to pose your question to them - quite often this can solve most common issues.
While I don’t want to hijack this, I must respond to control-z’s AVG comment. Yes there are free products such as AVG that may be very good - there are also millions of people every year who choose to pay for top-tier AV products, and for support of said products. There are many reasons they may do this - brand strength, comfort with industry leaders, and yes, even ignorance - this is the case with any technology purchase by a mainstream user. I don’t think it would be ethical to argue for or against any one product on the SDMB due to who I work for - but for you to step in and add nothing to this thread but insults for Xema’s choice in security products, is downright rude. You were the only responder to this thread that did not substantively respond to the OP - how does your remark help Xema with the issue at hand?
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but at least attach it to some kind of answer to the OP, or start a pit thread linked back to this one.
*Note - I am not posting this email in any official capacity, or on behalf of Symantec. These opinions are solely my own and do not reflect those of my employer.
Yes Norton has a good name, back in DOS days. And it has now been sullied by the terrible anti-virus and firewall products Symantec now puts out. That’s just my professional opinion, as someone who builds PCs, installs operating systems, is responsible for security and operation of an office network of computers, who writes software, and supports that software. Norton products cause many headaches with other software whilest consuming vast amounts of system resources.
And I did attach an answer to the OP, and that is to get out while they can. No use throwing good money after bad.
Symantec makes you jump through hoops before you get to a live person because they’re swamped with people asking simple questions that have documented answers.
True, it’s a lot more impersonal to go searching through a knowledgebase for your answer, and more of a hassle. The alternative is for Symantec to hire enough tech support people to answer all the calls. How do they pay for that? Well, one way is to charge more for the product. :eek:
I am a advanced computer user, so I usually find what I’m looking for by searching the knowledgebase. It’s a good way to solve the problem quickly on my own time, saving the humans for really gnarly problems.
I will back you up on this one 100%. While your answer was not a direct answer to the OP, it provided the OP with a easier and better path to take.
Why pay more for bloated products that don’t work well and more often than not cause more problems? If I had a dime for every time a problem on a computer was resolved by removing Norton I’d have a shitload of dimes. AVG provides a better product at a much better price.
With apologies to Crown Prince, I must agree with seven and control-z and 633.
Back in the day, sure you guys were good, but there was little competition.
I am a part time PC tech, and do a lot of new setups. It’s a major PITA to even get the box up and running on a network (even a small home network, 3 or 4 boxes) what with the Symantec crap popping up every minute, "Do you want to…we detect a security issue…blah…update… and so on…
Yes, Prince, I understand OEM agreements, newbie users, etc but it still sucks.
As a full time computer repair service owner, I advise people regularly never to buy your product, or any other heavily merchandised/commonly bundled crap. Brand strength and industry leadership also make for the biggest targets for virus writers trying to put one through the armor on AV apps.
At least with AVG, they have the choice to pay for a few additional features if desired rather than pay as much as $80 for something that will invariably disappoint them and is much more complex to work with than a simpler app like avg or ewido.
My bread and butter, including 5 machines in the last week has been formatting and reloading machines that have been splattered by massive virus problems. 75% or more of those machines are running Norton or McAfee products. Support for the average home user is almost worthless, by the time they have a question, its too late. Joe lunchbucket PC user dosen’t know how do load windows in safe mode, or can’t download patches and updates through a swamped dialup line from spyware and virus problems.
Granted, I am biased by my form of employment but paying for “support” that consists of trying to teach you over the phone how to fix it. If Norton want to have a real service business, why not set up a shop selling your product and take responsibility for fixing machines corrupted by viruses that make it through. I would happily pay some serious money for such a service bundled to an AV app. Unfortunately its about selling software, not about backing the product.
Corp products like you work in are a different animal and I understand they are far more specialized and have much different support needs as well as the premium price to warrant that support. Setting up AV apps across racks of servers possibly handling millions of pieces of email and thousands of files an hour is worth paying hundreds and or thousands of dollars for assistance with proper setups.
control-z, sorry, but when the questions in the OP are: “Is this a scam?” and “How do I reach Symantec(Norton)?”, the response of “switch to a different product” doesn’t help, IMHO.
I must say, since I sell our corporate products and use them personally, I may be a bit out of touch with our consumer products, and the quality and support policies thereof. In fact, I had typed a long explanation of the differences between retail and corporate versions, but on preview drachillix nailed it on the head: the products I sell are specialized, and have a lot of user-comforting “fat” cut out. But I can tell you that we - and most other major AV vendors - use the same definition sets and virus engines for both enterprise and retail products. If the AV product is frequently updated and running properly, the vast majority of viruses should be caught.
I don’t want to get into defending my company’s product on the boards - if you think it sucks, I won’t try to convince you otherwise. I was trying to make more of a general statement on the seemingly kneejerk reaction of “Norton sucks, switch to Grisoft” - if control-z’s answer would have been, “Looks like a scam, call Symantec at this number. Oh and by the way, they suck, switch to AVG” I would not have taken issue.
One last thing:
::steps on soapbox::
A couple of you mentioned that you manage systems on networks, and that you had seen problems using “Norton” on a network - the implication here is that retail product is being installed on a system with network access. Anytime you have a system authenticating to a local server, you don’t want to have a retail AV product on it. There are too many “user-comforting” features in the major retail AV products that can interfere with standard network communications, not to mention that most retail AV is bought with a personal firewall in a bundle - personal firewalls will not play nice on corporate networks. Most AV vendors have a centrally managed client firewall that can be licensed as an enterprise product that will work better - this will usually not be labeled a personal firewall, though.
I would suggest to any users who administer more than 5 or 10 systems on a network to look at the enterprise versions of most common AV tools. You will find them much easier to use, deploy and administer.
Many people think “enterprise” and they think “very large network”. Most enterprise antivirus products will install just fine on small production networks - they do not need dedicated systems, nor do they hog a lot of resources. They can install on resource-contrained servers, and work just fine - the key is to exclude temp directories and any database or email server directories from real-time AV scanning, and you’re fine. Most centralized management tools are lightweight, based on MMC, .NET or other standard management frameworks, so the learning curve isn’t too painful - hell, I’m a salesperson, and I’ve configured our corporate AV product before.
In fact, the cost of licensing most of these products is usually less than the equivalent amount of retail box copies.
Sorry for the hijack - as I said, I don’t want to defend my company’s product in particular, because I think that would be a bit tacky. But I did want to make clear that whenever a network is involved, and there are more types of traffic than just standard web and POP3, most retail products just don’t cut it. In these cases, enterprise products in general are almost always the better choice - and there are a lot of different enterprise AV products out there. I say this not as someone trying to sell any one particular product, but as someone who cares about making the internet a more secure place. Sounds cheesy, but there it is.
::steps off soapbox::
But I can tell you that number (800-234-2732) did not come up on a search of our internal numbers. It is very likely a third-party reseller that is overstepping their bounds in representing themselves as Symantec support - or worse, some scam artist looking for credit card numbers. In fact, I am forwarding their number to the appropriate teams to ensure that no misrepresentation is occurring.