With a few weeks left on this years licence, yesterday and today I’ve uninstalled my Norton Security from my laptops and my phone will shortly follow. As part of the uninstall there’s a Norton Tell Us Why link (that didn’t work) so I thought I would Tell You Why on here. Perhaps someone in Marketing might read it.
1. I normally buy a licence annually from Amazon these days and rattle in the new number. This year even if I did I would have to enter card details (although I’ve already bought it) for default auto-renewal that I wouldn’t want anyway. So Norton, a security company, are in breach of GDPR by insisting I provide them with details I don’t want to give them and they don’t need to have sight of or indeed store (the counter argument that many others do the same is weak, it's a dodgy business practice, end of)
2. the auto renewal price at 4 x the Amazon price (you are kidding)
3. based on what’s seen on these Forums the apparent issues you have with auto renewal anyway around payments and refunds
4. the complete lack of loyalty to existing customers (esp. based on the previous points)
5. the incessant Marketing popups about renewal, Norton things that I’m not using and I don’t want to use (“Don’t tell me again” never works, switching things off via Norton to stop that kind of thing doesn’t either)
6. the woeful official support (aside from your Forums that appear to be staffed by helpful volunteers) and are rarely read by actual Norton folk by the looks; epitomized by the tragically slow response to fix the “green tick” incident last year which rumbled on for 5+ months
7. the fact you switched off Anti-Theft in the Mobile app (which didn’t actually bother me but judging by the comments of others on your Forums they did use that bit and, so, fair point...)
8. the awfulness of the My Account website which often doesn’t reflect how many licences you’ve used (I see you’ve now simplified that recently to be a bit better)
9. the fact that I might get a refund if I do get a virus isn’t a good deal; I get a trashed laptop and you might, for example, give me a fiver in return; wow.
10. etc
So I think Symantec/Norton/Broadcomm/LifeLock, or whatever its called this week, have some serious work to do if they want to retain/regain customers; it looks like a one way trip to the bottom at the moment.
I’ve been using Norton (mostly) for at least 24 years so it’s weird to not have it on our PCs. But Windows Security, in magazine tests over the past few months, is apparently now almost as good. And given I don’t spend my life on dodgy websites anyway I’m going to give it a square go.
So that's why, Marketing...
Cheers,
David