Every year I buy a Norton subscription for myself, my wife, and now my family. The price of doing it through Norton is unattractive. I can usually buy the subscription online from Amazon, eBay, Frys, wherever. But the nice people who make the top of the line Norton product every year just ASSUME I either install it new or renew a subscription. What a mess. Every year I get to go thru 1-3 hours of uninstalling Norton then reinstalling it on every PC. I have 3 PCs, an iPad, and 2 iPhones now. I dread what horrors Symantec will inflict on my Apple products which is why I bought the 10 license deal.
My wife went thru hell 1st But got it working on Saturday after almost 2 hours. On Sunday, my PC failed to install so I chatted with India. They uninstalled and reinstalled Sunday morning. That busted my Wife's laptop so she spent another hour with them reinstalling Sunday mid-day. Guess what it was this time? The Family 10 licenses edition ASSUMES that there is one master Big Daddy in the house and that he logs into everyone's PC to do the install. NOPE -- WRONG. What Symantec does is forces me to give my userID and password to my Symantec account to my wife and daughters (you know, the daughter who is away in college, with her idiot dorm friends talking to her during the install). Once my daughter logs into Norton under my Norton ID and password she can install the new version. BUT THIS REVEALS MY PASSWORDS VAULT TO EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY. You call yourself a security company? Puulease... I don't want my daughters seeing my passwords to my mutual funds and company intranet! Symantec should be ashamed. What a gaping hole.
Well, anyway, India made my wife change the Norton account to her email/password. Thats why I couldn't install. Then when I spoke to India and told them "this might have something to do with the family license thing" they reinstalled everything and put it under my old UID/login anyway. That caused my wife's Norton security on her laptop to stop working. So she spent another hour + with India chat support... See where this goes? Every PC is likely to be a roundabout with the India chat room. Plus ALL MY PASSWORDS ARE REVEALED TO MY KIDS!
I love Norton products, have since the 1980s. The uninstall is now much less than excrutiating like it was 5 years ago. But the Product Managers and programmers on this product need to stop making assumptions about how people install this stuff. Net: The install process for Norton antivirus/360/security are still convoluted and error prone.
BTW - I have been a computer programmer and professional for 30+ years. I am no novice. I hack PCs, install Windows and Office often, manage my own windows Startup, installed drivers when Windows needed them, edit the registry, build my own PCs with motherboards, disks, and RAM in hand. I do everything but write Windows. I am far from a novice. If I get in the poop every year with your software, there are 1000s in worse shape than me. And it all pops out in huge costs in the Symantec call center but the hidden costs are the millions of hours customers pay that are never recorded or acknowledged.