I probably am one of those foundation customers that big organisations just love. I settle into their product, end up using it faithfully for years or decades. I've been running two sets of family licenses and the years and dollars have just racked up. Norton has been great and given me a great sense of comfort and security over the years. Thank you.
As someone who's worked with sales and marketing teams for years, I'm also all to familiar with the pressures of generating sales, driving cross-selling between products and upselling of existing ones. And I can clearly see that Norton's team has become so pressured, it has completely forgotten what's really important - your customer.
I first noticed the signs of decline with auto subscription renewals. For the newcomer would enjoy a first year price that seemed reasonable and would the fee would renew automatically each year. But then a few years ago the auto renewal skyrocketed without warning to a point where it was more than double the year-one sign up. It left me feeling misled and even a little betrayed by this dirty feeling tactic. They were basically were forcing a highly profitable and loyal long-term customer to cancel my automatic renewal each year, and count down to the wire just so I would be offered the same deal that some random person gets who had never used the product.
Now in 2021 I'm finding that my trusted protector, which has always sat silently in the background keeping me safe and letting me get on with my life... is no longer willing to be silent or sit in the background. My 'blocker of spam' has become a supreme spammer that bypasses email and all attempts to silence it, to serves up a diet of fear mongering messaging and excessive cross-selling of products. Abusing my trust in the product by displaying my location and implying I'm under threat. By showing wireless network messages that appear to indicate my wireless network has been compromised when in fact it is just a weak password yet trying to sell me Norton's VPN product. The list goes on.
My trusted protector is now my most penetrating and unstoppable spammer. Ignoring 'don't show again' or setting changes or calls with chat support.
Norton you really need to stop and think what you've done. You have lost your way. Just like you've lost a solid gold customer. A tech savvy early adopter and the sort of person friends turn to for advice on tech and ... software choices. So when your marketing team wants to spend a fortune on workshops and focus groups to determine what your customers' are thinking and why you are declining - save your money and just share this email. You need to refocus on who matters or all the cross-selling and fear mongering in the world won't save you or your bottom line.