Last August I posted about my abysmal experience with McAfee VirusScan and how I removed all traces of it from my system. Last month I posted about the unexpected charge I received on my credit card for auto renewal of my VirusScan account and how I was planning to ask McAfee for the refund they offer for auto-renewals. I closed the post with this sentence: If I need to jump through hoops I won’t be a happy camper. As it stands, I am not a happy camper.
Once I navigated McAfee’s support site and found the email for customer service, I fired off a refund request. I also requested that auto-renewal be turned off for my account (apparently, McAfee thinks this is more appropriate than providing an option in the account settings to turn it off). A couple of days later I received a reply informing me that I qualified for the refund and should see it within 5 business days. I was satisfied and put it to the back of my mind.
Ten days or so passed and I still had no notification of any sort of refund. I logged in to my account and found that my auto-renewal had been reversed (i.e., I no longer had any active products registered to my account). That was a good sign, but it didn’t explain why I had not yet seen the refund. One of the support options is live chat with a CS staffer, so rather than waiting for another email response I decided to try it out.
The CS rep I talked to was quite polite. I tried to be as well. Having worked in different service positions in the past, I know how frustrating it can be dealing with abusive customers. Unfortunately, too many of the customers CS reps have to deal with are abusive. They are usually angry when they contact the CS department and it shows. So I always make an extra effort to avoid appearing angry when I make a support request via a text medium where it’s easy to misinterpret intentions in the absence of body language and voice inflection. If you piss off the CS rep, they are more likely to rush you through the process and less willing to go the extra mile for you.
I explained my situation to the CS rep and she asked me to hold while she checked my account details. A few minutes later, she returned and told me that I had indeed been credited the refund. I explained that there was no record of it when I logged into my bank’s site to check my account details. After holding a few minutes more, she informed me that I should see the refund in either three-five business days or before my next card statement. I thanked her and put it in the back of my mind.
Ten days or so after that session, my credit card statement had been issued and there was still no evidence of the refund, either in the statement or in my account history. The original $39.99 charge to McAfee had been processed and was present in the statement. Initially, I was being charged for a service I wasn’t using and didn’t want. After I asked for the refund, that service was canceled. Since there is no evidence of the refund and the charge still remains, I’m now paying for nothing. Time to talk to McAfee CS again.
I went back to the live chat and spoke with another CS rep. I was halfway into explaining my actions to date when he asked me to hold while he checked my account history. He returned to inform me that the service was not active on my account and I had been credited with the refund. I finished explaining the situation, that no I had not been credited with a refund on my end, and he asked me to hold once again. Some time later he returned to tell me that I need to take the issue up with my bank. I waited for more info, but nothing came.
By this time I was starting to lose my cool. The first thing that popped into my head is that he should be giving me some sort of transaction number or something that I could take to my bank to verify that McAfee had indeed issued a refund. Yet, this guy was essentially finished with me. I’m guessing that it’s against McAfee policy for CS reps to terminate chat conversations, since both times I used the chat option the CS reps did not do so. After realizing that no other information was forthcoming, I asked the guy for some sort of proof to give to the bank. Then I waited. And waited. I assume he was talking to another customer, but eventually he apologized for the delay in answering and asked me to hold again. Finally, he came back with a confirmation number to verify the refund.
Now the ball is in the bank’s court. This Monday, I will take the confirmation number to them and see what happens. I’m not at all happy with McAfee. The CS was fine, but the options to contact them are not immediately accessible. To get to them, you have to wade through the knowledge base first. That’s no big deal though. While the version of VirusScan I used was not fit for public release and was a PITA to uninstall, event it isn’t my biggest complaint.
The major problem I have with them is their auto-renewal option. Nowhere in the literature I received from them was this mentioned. And since there was absolutely no reason for me to explore my account information online, I never encountered any mention of it. But even if I had, it’s ridiculous that customers have to contact CS to request that auto-renewal be disabled. Companies often claim that auto-renewal is a convenience for the customer, though when enabled by default some may view it more as a benefit for the company. McAfee’s requirement to contact customer service, rather than providing an option in the account settings, really looks like they are doing it to increase renewals.
Ultimately, I should have been more vigilant. When I first bought the software I should have logged into my account at McAfee’s site and explored all of the available options. Perhaps then I would have been aware of the auto-renewal “feature” and could have avoided this mess. But I know for sure that if I ever find my self selling a service online, any account renewal option will be off by default. In my mind, an unexpected charge from a service no longer used is more inconvenient to a customer than losing the service for a day or two. Plus, requiring the customer to actively turn auto-renewal on makes it more likely he will remember that it is on later on down the road.
Technorati Tags: McAfee, VirusScan, antivirus, auto renewals, subscriptions
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