Norton WiFi Privacy Woes

So I've been running Norton VPN for about two months now, and it works well enough, except for two issues: sometimes when it's trying to load, I get the message "Connecting" but it never connects to a VPN server. I can quit it and reload it, and the same thing happens. I usually solve that by rebooting, but that's getting a little old. The second issue is that some sites accuse me of running a bot, notably Pinterest. I suspect the WiFi Privacy because I can turn it off and Pinterest no longer complains. Then too, some sites will not connect when the VPN is activated, notably Best Buy and Walmart. I can enter BestBuy.com in my address bar in Chrome, for instance, and it will show the usual   "waiting for  www (dot) bestbuy (dot) com "message    until it decides that a connection is not in my immediate future. If I turn the VPN off, Best Buy connects without a problem. It seems pretty clear that the WiFi Privacy package is closely connected to the problems I describe here. Anyone else experienced these issues? If so, what fixes or work-arounds are available? Thanks.