Customer Reviews

Norton Antivirus 2010 1-User/3PC [Old Version]

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I've used Norton for 9 years and at the end of each year I buy the next version (when "I" get the time). Their policy has always been that your anti virus still functions but the latest updates are not given unless your paid subscription is up to date. This is fair and fine. What is piss poor customer treatment is now the minute your subscription expires your anti virus is turned off leaving you exposed on the internet! I won't be held hostage again I switched to Vipre and its even better(check out all the 5 star reviews). I won't have something I paid for taken away until I pay them a fresh ransom! As consumers send them a message or expect all of them to start doing this!

Update - Microsoft Security Essentials Is a FREE (anti virus) program downloaded from Microsoft and works extremely well. It consumes very little of your computers resources and seem to catch everything. This might be their best kept secret ever! An IT manager in my workplace recommend it to me and I've bee thrilled with it's performance ever since and it's FREE! Just do a search for Microsoft Security Essentials and follow the instructions from the Microsoft link.

I have purchased Norton/Symantec Antivirus products for the last seven years, but only recently have tried to use the customer service. Folks, do NOT buy any product from Norton/Symantec if you ever want customer service or any technical support whatsoever.

THEIR TECH SUPPORT IS INCREDIBLY POOR!!!

My son's laptop recently contracted a virus/trojan. We contacted customer service for assistance because the virus scan was not picking up the virus and the virus was preventing updates from being loaded.

AFTER ONE HOUR ON HOLD for a tech, we were told we would have to pay for tech support -- $99.99.

then Symantec charged my account twice for the $99.99.

Then I was placed on hold for over one hour with no response -- I finally hung up.

Then they tried the better part of a Saturday night and Sunday morning to remove the virus. Four or five different people tried and each person repeated the same futile steps the previous person had taken.

I finally asked for a more experienced technician to work with me. I was again placed on hold and had to hang up because nobody came on the line.

I have had to contact Symantec through CHAT because I cannot get through on the phone and have been assured that the Customer Service rep. will call me. I received ONE phone call within a seven day period even with repeated CHATS by me and several assurances from Symantec. My one phone call at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night resulted in my being placed on hold and my phone call disconnected.

They have my $200.00 and won't respond. They keep stating that they will call me and will not do so.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND DON'T BUY THEIR PRODUCTS.

Product disables itself unless you pay yearly renewal fees.

I'm giving all Norton 2009 and 2010 antivirus products a 1-star because of their "software-as-rental" policies.

I thought the 1 year subscription period meant that automatic updates would no longer be provided, but that otherwise the product would continue to work OK.

Wrong.

The software stops working and disables itself, unless you pay the yearly renewal fees, which are much higher than so-called "buying" the next year's version.

Imagine if Windows stopped working, unless you kept paying yearly fees to Microsoft, forever.

I made this purchase because a free online Norton scan indicated my laptop was infected with the Koobface worm. When the CD arrived, I immediately installed it and did a complete scan. It did NOT indicate that I had the Koobface worm. I was understandably confused, and used the online chat feature to discuss this with an agent. The first one I contacted said that virus and worm questions required a specialist, and connected me with one. So far so good. But then, without confirming whether I did or did not have the worm, this agent tried to bully me into paying for that which I thought I had already paid by buying their software, i.e. identifying whether or not I had an infection and then removing it. This is what he told me: "The consultation and service charge for the bundle option would be US $ 139.99. The consultation and the virus removal fee alone would be 99.99$. We guarantee to identify any threats that may be on your system. Once we have found them, we will remove them. In addition, we guarantee our work for a period of 7 days from the day/time the issue is resolved by our technician." Which means if it comes up again after a week, all I have to do is pay ANOTHER fee. What???

Takes too many resources to run, slows down my pc way too much. And I dont like that they completely shut down the software after your subscription. Used to be you could keep the program without the updates...not anymore. I have been a long time Customer but I think I am moving on to other anti virus software after this subscription is over.

I trusted Norton 360 to protect my computer. Just recently, some malware got into my computer despite Norton's "rigorous" protection. (Its one of the ones that divert google search results to other targets). Since Norton didn't seem to fix it I tried some other freeware things which also couldn't find it. I tried to connect to Norton one-click chat support but that hung twice, so I figured that Norton's virus protection had been hacked by a virus. I considered contacting Norton, but they charge $100 to consult on a problem that their stuff can't handle, so I looked at Norton's advice on how to fix this on your own, which was to disable Windows backup and run a full scan, which I tried. During (or after) the full scan my system rebooted but was unable to complete a re-boot in normal mode or in any of the "safe" modes. (at least 20 attempts) So I used my two year old recovery disks which somehow found it necessary to remove all my stuff.

How can it happen that when you run a virus protection scan from a company whose business is to keep your computer safe, the result is that your computer is trashed?

Right after I installed 2010 my home page was changed to a Norton page and it was grayed out so I could not change it back. I tried to get help through their chat online but the tech could not fix it and left me hanging. The tech had uninstalled my Norton when he tried to fix it and I had to download Norton and reinstall it all over again. I found an application online and ended up fixing the homepage problem myself. I wish I would have tried to fix the problem myself to begin with.

Recently I was infected with a Trojan and Norton could not get rid of it. The Trojan had infected a .dll that was in System 32 and it said I had to manually delete it. Unfortunately you cannot delete or replace a System 32 file. I tried to run a scan in safemode to only find once you get there all your Norton shortcuts are hidden in safemode. So I had to boot back into Windows, put a shortcut in a folder, go back to safemode and start my scan. It seemed to have gotten rid of the virus until I got more warnings several days later.

After going through this all over again and not being able to get rid of the virus I realized I could make a text file of my scan so I did and went back to read it. The virus it kept finding was in my recycle bin. So all I did was empty my trash and the alert stopped. Now why didn't Norton either tell me where the file was or delete it itself ? Why was I infected in the first place ? It doesn't seem like much of a virus scanner.

I'm on my last 30 days of Norton and I think I'm going to try something from another company because I've had it with them. Plus from reading these reviews I see when my time is up they will shut it off leaving me unprotected.

If you use an email client such as Thunderbird that stores multiple emails in a single file, beware of this product. It destroyed my email stored in Thunderbird.

Pros: Very fast, easy to install. I haven't had issues with the installer like I did with the 2008 version. Has a low memory footprint.

Cons: Symantec is apparently trying to get you to switch to a different product. This is now rental software. Prior to the 2009 version, when your subscription was up, it simply kept you from updating more current virus signatures. Not a problem, it gives you a couple of weeks of cushion in case you forgot to order it. Not any more.... When your subscription runs out, the entire engine stops running. So Symantec in their infinite wisdom feels that it's better to have you totally unprotected than to have an older virus signature file.

Imagine if when your car's warranty was up, your car just stopped running. Or when your computer's warranty was up, it wouldn't turn on anymore. That's what they've done with this product.

There is way too much good competition in this arena to do this to your customers.

I have used this product for the last 3 months, not user friendly most of their settings are set to auto, when it finds a virus it quarantines I see no purpose for such action software should be set to delete I'm jet to find this option, no option for auto shut off computer when it finish scanning, slow scanning I have a duo core processor with 4gb memory and it takes about an hour, I also had norton 360 which it was a bit better until it crash on a definations update 3 days with out antivirus and no apologies from Norton, next time most likely switch to Trend Micro.