Has Tatumba site gone Wikileaks? You be the judge. An insider with Microsoft has revealed all to The Mad Ape. Dude I do not know who you are and I do not want to know but your info tells me what I had long suspected.

So to set up this “Insider  Tells All Story”, I must give some background.

On December 23, 2007 I posted an article titled: “Norton 360 – Great Product if you can install it“. It was one of a 3-part rant where I went off on Symantec whom I said provided shitty products, shitty service, and sleazy business practices.

The articles have continued until this day to draw traffic; so I can only conclude that there still must be some lingering truth to my old rants.

That being said, I received the following commentary on that article from a Microsoft Insider who confirms what I have always suspected; software giants do not give a shit about us. They only care about green and will knowingly deliver defective products to market.

NOW FOR A LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I have no idea if this is legit or not. I post it here as I received it. It will take others to confirm it. My experience is that I have been sold crap under the guise of it being a good product.

RECEIVED FROM High Desert Skye on October 5th, 2011

Ever so grateful for all this wonderful information. I’ve posted the address up on Amazon. Look for “Mysterious Microburst.”

I *considered* purchasing Norton 360 for my older “door stop” PC desktop & ancient laptop, since the price mysteriously dropped to 50% or less. Having been a software tester for decades, it is my tendency to question why a piece of software is selling so cheaply. Although it angers the optimists around me, I look for worst-case scenarios. I read reviews for the product on Amazon. The majority of people appear to have new machines, fast processors, gobs of RAM and more than adequate space on their Hard Drive(s), so they are thrilled at what a good deal they’ve gotten.

THEN there are the single-star reviews from people who have some very creative ideas about what happened to their machine post-installation. I began researching and found this site. Great stuff..sorry you had to go through this experience but you have done a tremendous service to people who imagine that large software companies like Norton have integrity. You are correct in your observation that matters to these companies is Their Bottom Line. They do not care about the naive consumer, let alone the experienced ones. If a person hasn’t got the latest and greatest equipment, that’s their tough luck. Sadly, those who can’t pony up a thousand or more for “state-of-the-art” equipment are often the people who are buying this product because it looks like such a good deal.

A person can’t afford to throw away 80 bucks, but they can afford to spend 40 bucks — and in too many cases they’d be better off tossing their money into the fire. They don’t bother to uninstall the previous version of Norton because there really shouldn’t be a NEED to manually uninstall a previous version of a product. In most cases, they believe they can UPGRADE. What rational reason can be given to explain that an attempt to upgrade is akin to playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun? Whatever happened to Class Action Lawsuits?

Regrettably, I worked for Microsoft for several years and can confirm everything you assert about large software companies. As a Tester. I sat in many meetings and argued that Developers needed to fix a problem I could hit in half a dozen ways. Here are some of the common responses, as I recall: “We don’t care.” “You’re the ONLY one who has reported this problem. Customers are unlikely to ever encounter it. We’re going to PUNT this one.” “We’ve already blown one ship date. We can’t screw up another. It’s going to ship with this problem. We’ll release a fix for it in an update.” I was PRESSURED to sign off on products I knew to have problems that would wreak havoc when encountered. I remember using the word “altruism” in a meeting and having a dozen people laugh in my face. I resigned from Microsoft while I still had some sense of integrity and morality. I walked away from a large paycheck, many stock options and incredible benefits while I still had some crumbs of sanity left.

Since that time, things have gone steadily downhill. The structure of testing has deteriorated while the people who run the show assert that testing has *improved*. If the guy at the top says it’s better, it MUST be true. heh. The first time I saw and attempted to work with VISTA, I was horrified. I didn’t purchase or install VISTA on any of my machines. By this time I was working a minimum wage gig, tutoring teenagers and young adults with disabilities. Make money or remember what it means to have self-respect and take pride in one’s work. Imagine a teenager who has a form of autism shopping for a laptop. They TRUST the advertising. I attempt to explain that software is designed and tested by human beings and companies are not always telling the truth. Just because a company is huge and successful does not mean you can believe what you see on TV, read in magazine ads or are told by salespeople in stores. They encounter problem after problem in VISTA, including the infamous BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death, for the uninitiated).

This can be a devastating lesson that causes people who demonstrated great promise to abandon computing entirely. People with autism often do not have high frustration tolerance. For some, computer proficiency meant they had a chance of a career, of acquiring technical and social skills that would have allowed them to live independently. When software doesn’t work, when the machine crashes, they do not blame the software or manufacturer: they blame themselves.

This is not sour grapes nor cynicism you’re reading in this comment: this is reality. In small software companies, when I said software wasn’t going to ship until certain problems were corrected and tested, software didn’t ship. I faced off with Developers who were tired of coding — I was tired of testing, but there was no way I’d let the product ship until problems were fixed and I’d tested on every configuration we claimed to support. The owners and management supported me, because they knew one bad release could cost them their business. I never reported a bug that could not be reproduced. And if something was minor and difficult to encounter, it went into the Read Me First document. Nothing that caused a crash and/or data loss went out to the public. Huge software companies that rake in billions of dollars cannot continue to coast on what was once a strong reputation and release bad products to consumers without suffering the consequences.

In a weak economy with free and cheap alternatives that are better, where certain source code is openly available and custom solutions can be created, even customers who have become accustomed to using products from big name companies are going to find the courage to venture into the unknown. Even the most naive person can tell the difference between bad and good, between what works and what doesn’t and learn from experience.

Testing was and should remain the Final Word and it is not the job of the consumer to find and report problems to a company that in all likelihood already knows the problem exists. The monolithic companies are losing ground to smaller players and Linux distros. Unfortunately, there will always be the consumer who trusts the big names to do the right thing, when the opposite is true. To these consumers, I say this: you can become accustomed to mediocrity as many people have and will continue to do. However, until you quit settling for whatever garbage these companies glamorize and put into a pretty new box and begin to complain and/or quietly boycott by refusing to spend another dollar on new versions or “upgrades”, these companies will continue to believe that their consumer base is nothing more than a vast herd of sheep waiting to be fleeced.

Source: http://www.tatumba.com (http://s.tt/13kaB)

Technorati Tags: Mysterious Microburst, Microsoft, Symantec, Norton 360, Defective Software, Wikileaks, The Mad Ape, Tatumba.com

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If you are part of the PPC game there is a very good chance that your answer is yes. Any information you can find on your competition is sure to make your job easier.

But this is impossible, right? Maybe in the past, but not today. Brad Callen’s PPC Web Spy software gives you the ability to see what your competition is up to. Perhaps the biggest benefit of this keyword research software is that it can be integrated, as a plugin, into your Firefox browser*. This makes it easy to find the information you are looking for without having to open any additional programs, or jump through hoops just for some basic information.

Additionally, with PPC Web Spy you will receive an analysis of every keyword that your competitors are bidding on. Not only can this give you an idea of what they are doing, but will also help you to tweak your campaigns. You can also find the cost per click for each keyword as well as estimated cost per day.

Simply put, PPC Web Spy allows you to spy on your competitors. In turn, you can collect information on their campaigns and keywords and subsequently use them to your advantage.

Trial and error or trial and pull out your hair? Both apply when trying to figure out the perfect keywords for your marketing campaign. Eliminate all of this by stealing successful keywords and ads from your competition.

Save yourself the expense and headaches getting the right campaign and get your hands on a copy of PPC Web Spy.

*note: PPC Web Spy only works with Firefox.

Technorati Tags: PPC, PPC Web Spy, Keywords, Steal Keywords, Brad Callen, free PPC software, free keyword tool

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Check out the Myanmar Man’s Diary. His install caused all kinds of problems. The one to note is that WordPress 2.7 deleted all of his static pages. Poof they were gone…

Last evening, I log in again and everything went fine. Then I look at my Myanmar Man’s wordpress blog, and here, all my static pages were gone! No where! I look into my admin area and there also, all my static pages are completely gone! I was shock! I really have no idea where all my static pages were gone. Then I look into my blog carefully, and found that my pages were republished as posts into my main wordpress page. It is funny as well as crazy. I found out that, when I clean up and repair my wordpress database, the wordpress database clears all the information about the pages. As the pages use the same IDs as posts, they appeared as posts instead of pages. Finally I cut the contents of these posts, pasts them into my new pages, delete the old ones, and republished the new ones. That resolve the problem. Now my wordpress blog is up and running again, without any problem. Or at least that was what I think.
Another problem again comes up later, as I check the pages, and found out that the Archives page returns error. It says something like this:

“Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 82 bytes) in /home/bamarlay/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 814″

That’s not all. Check out N 82 50 24 / Nat Arem Blog He reports that the visual editor is crashing faster than a Kamikaz:

So, if you just upgraded, have you noticed that the Visual Editor no longer works and a lot of the javascript functions (ie, the drop down menus) on the left aren’t working? You aren’t alone. This has happened to a lot of people.

Had enough yet? Sucks to be you cuz here are some more: Blank Pages being reported by BlogsDNA.com, how about HeyChinaski.com…he is reporting that RSS feeds are screwing up.

Will these problems be fixed? Yes of course they will. The creators of plugins need to have time to upgrade. WordPress, realizing a need to address bugs, will be releasing version 2.7.1 ASAP.

Until then stay away from WordPress 2.7. At this stage it is just too quirky and has not been tested thoroughly. Wait until the blogoshpere is reporting less problems and then go for it. Until then let the Lemmings jump of the cliff for you. Their rush to have the latest and greatest will help us because they are being our beta testers.

Technorati Tags: WordPress 2.7 Problems, WordPress 2.7 Sucks, Problems with WordPress 2.7, WordPress 2.7 Bugs, WordPress 2.7.1

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With all software upgrades, and new releases, companies in a rush to get to market, release their software to the market when it has not been beta tested thoroughly.

There are many reasons for it, but the biggest is the profit-driven nature of the beast. When bugged software is dumped on to the masses, it makes us all become their beta-tester. There are times to be at the forefront and times not to be.

With the new release of WordPress 2.7, do yourself a favor and hold off from the temptation to upgrade. In particular you should be especially cautious if you are using a non-default WordPress Theme and/or Plugins.

I will publicly predict right here, right now, that there will be bugs and there will be non-compatible Themes and there will be non-compatible Plugins.

If you are patient, and wait for bug fixes, theme, and plugin upgrades, you can make the transition a better experience and save yourself the stress, and embarrassment caused by lost sales and lost traffic.

I bet you are thinking: “If everybody thought like the Ape, then no software product would ever have a chance to succeed.” You know something, you are 100% correct.

I know human nature and there will be enough suckers people non-voluntary beta testers out there to ensure that the kinks are worked out. I will just hang out and watch all of the people bitch and complain when their blogs go down and gleefully say “I told ya so”

Technorati Tags: Don’t upgrade to WordPress 2.7, Stay away from WordPress 2.7, WordPress 2.7 Bugs

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When you click the link on the top right you will be met with a landing page. Click the corner peel in the upper right in order to save the $10.00.

It is as simple as that. I bought the resell rights to this script and sell it for the lowest possible price, as allowed in their reseller agreement.

Technorati Tags: corner peel script, peel away ads, corner peel, peel away ads script only 17.00, save money on corner peel script

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They are impressed with the customization I have done to their premium theme. So in an effort to promote their product they chose Tatumba.com to be front and center on their site.

This works out great for me as it is driving traffic to my blog. I am truly satisfied with my purchase of this quality theme.

If you are looking for a slick theme to make your blog more professional in its appearance then check out their site today

Technorati Tags: WP-Premiums.com, professional WordPress themes, Tatumba.com featured

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For those of you that follow my rants on a day-to-day basis, you may remember that on Christmas Day 2007, my hard drive crashed. That was a first for me and it made me sit up and take notice. If this has ever happened to you I know exactly how you feel.

In my case, at first I thought that I did not lose any vital documents. I thought my damage was minimal with my only loss being 2 weeks worth of email. As it turns out I also lost about 40 hours worth of computer code for a client contract that I was working on. That was a significant setback and I had no one to blame but myself.

For those of you that do not know, I am a computer programmer by trade, specializing in pocket pc/windows mobile applications. Anyway I will talk more about that in the future but suffice to this cost me a lot of time and money.

Still, I consider myself lucky. Lucky that it was the Christmas season when this happened. If I had not been on a bit of a vacation, my losses would have been significantly worse.

Complacency Costs Money

This was so like me. I had been manually backing up my hard drive to an external 300 GB drive. You know what comes next don’t you? With manual backups comes complacency. I just took for granted that everything would be OK and that I would never have a problem. That was a BIG mistake.

I knew I needed a plan to prevent this from ever happening again.

In The Beginning

The big factor that came into play was that I had to develop an automated backup process that was economical, effective, redundant, and easy to use. I had to make sure that I would never lose any data again.

You see I try and do everything I can for as free as I can. The more free stuff I can use the better. My only policy is, whether the product is a freebie or cost money, it has to work and work well.

My Plan

Although it may seem simple enough and just plain common sense…ask yourself “Am I prepared for all situations?” If not read on and learn what I have done to ensure that You never get slapped with data loss again.

Save Regularly While Working – The Micro Level of Backing Up

If I am working on some development code and everything freezes and I have not saved in a while I could lose all the new code that I had written. This happens all too often so I have gotten used to saving regularly.

Explore the software that you are using. Some, like MS Word, have automated save procedures built in. Don’t rely on that extensively…nothing beats you taking a couple of seconds to click the save button. This is a habitual procedure and you have to force yourself to do it.

Backing Up – Managing Data at the Macro Level

If you have been manually backing up your hard drives, it is time to consider automating the process. Feel free to continue doing the manual process but If you do not have an automated process in place you will lose data. I guarantee it!

Backing up to an External Hard Drive

I use a free piece of software that works great. It is called DriveImage XML. To automate it I configured my Windows Task Manager to run once every day. It generally takes about 2.5 hours to complete so I do it in the evenings when I am generally off-line. Read my article titled: “Is There a Ghost in Your Machine” to learn about this freebie software.

Where Are Your Backups? Are they Safe? Even from Little Johnny?

This is important. Are your critical documents really safe just being backed up to an external hard drive? What happens if your house burns down? What happens if you have your external hard drive and PC connected and little Johnny spills his grape slushie all over them?

We never think that something like that will happen to us until…well…it happens to us.

Online Automated Back Ups – Free to try

If you are like me and have data that is just too important to lose then you need to consider using an online automated backup service. One like Carbonite.com. What got me hooked was the ease of use. They let me have a free trial to test their service. I didn’t even need a credit card. After the trial period I paid them $49.95 for 12 months of automated backups. That is under $5.00 per month and Carbonite will let you store an unlimited amount of data from your hard drive.

The Shameless Plug

Yeah yeah…I know…You may be thinking that I am doing this to make a buck off sending you to Carbonite. I do make a small commission of $1.00 – $3.00 for each lead…but that is not the real reason. I use them to give me peace of mind. Their product is solid and their service impeccable. If don’t make the lead money I don’t care. I would appreciate the stipend for you trying the product, but not going to sweat it if you just go to them directly. The important thing is you need to back up your data online somehow.

Go Easy On My Resources Carbonite

I have approximately 20 Gigs stored with them. It took a few days to do the initial backup but after that it only uploads new files or files that have been changed. If you feel that it is using too much of your system resources, you can set it to a low-level background procedure. That way more resources can be dedicated to your everyday computing.

I have 1 gig of RAM on my box and I did not notice any system degradation at any time of the initial backup process. And now that it is complete backed up sessions are kept quite short. Carbonite is always working and it will give you peace of mind!

Carbonite Guarantees That Your Data is Safe and Secure

Carbonite takes data privacy and security very seriously. They encrypt your files twice before backing them up securely off-site, using the same encryption techniques that banks use. Files remain encrypted at their secure data centers, so only you can see them.

Technorati Tags: backups, carbonite, data loss, backup plan, DriveImage XML, bank encryption

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There may be brief periods of downtime and screwy looking screens so excuse the mess while I get this thing tweaked.

Up until now I have been using a customized version of WP-Multiflex-3 1.3 by Ainslie Johnson . It has been an easy theme to work with but to get it just right, I had to do a lot of tweaking. I have been able to manage, but for the most part it has held me back.

For example my sidebars and content area are too narrow. For the life of me I can not understand why most blog themes are wasting space. Anyway that is another topic for another time.

This new theme, although better, is still not everything I hope for, but until I can create my own customized theme from scratch it will suffice.

Welcome to Tatumba.com Version 2.0

Technorati Tags: theme limitations, wp-multiflex, tatumba 2.0

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I am a bit confused with Symantec. They have issued me a refund for my copy of Norton 360, saying that they are fulfilling my refund request. Problem is that I did not request a refund. What I did was tell them that they had better help me get it installed and running properly or I would ask for a refund.

Since they did help me get it running, albeit one of the worst software installation experiences I have ever encountered, it is now working properly.

So what do I do now? Did they do this to shut me up – like that is going to work. They never told me to remove the software – so am I allowed to keep it running? They did not expire the software on me and I can still access my download page.

These guys seem to be suffering from Corporitis…a disease that inflicts most large corporations.

The symptoms include:

• left hand has lost all connectivity to the right hand
• releasing products to the market place that have not been properly tested
• piss poor website customer experience

The cure:

A good bitch slapping from the Mad Ape

Power, Performance, Protection. ParetoLogic products put you in control of your PC’s performance and security

Thinking of buying Norton 360? Read these free reports so you are an informed buyer:

Norton 360 – Great Product if you can install it

Symantec – Good Products – Bad Delivery

Technorati Tags: Norton 360, Symantec, Corporitis

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Backups Are Not the Answer 

With my Christmas Day hard drive crash I have been working frantically. While I am glad to get a new hard drive for my computer, the process of getting all of my software and documents reinstalled has been a daunting task. Even with everything backed up it still will take the better part of two weeks to get it back to a where it was.

I have reinstalled software, documents, email, etc. Then my computer has been going through endless Microsoft updates. I have come a long way but there is still a long way to go to get my PC back in shape.

So to me this has all been time well wasted. I have better things to do and to write about, but I think this advice is important. If it saves even one person from going through the recovery process of a catastrophic hardware failure then this article will have been worth it.

BOO! There is a Ghost in my Machine… 

Now that this has happened to me my first thought is that maybe I need to look at automatic ghosting. Always have a clone of my drive at the ready. The ghosting process is creating exact replicas, clones, or your hard drive(s) so you can restore them if you run into trouble.

There are multiple products available for doing just this. One that I like is DriveImage XML. First off it is 100% free and secondly it is just as powerful as one you would spend money on.

The program allows you to backup logical drives and partitions to image files, browse these images, view and extract files, restore these images to the same or a different drive, copy directly from drive to drive, schedule automatic backups with Task Scheduler. The user-friendly interface makes using this software easy.

For me this software is a must have. Set it and forget it. I do not want to go through this again. It is a pain in my blue monkey butt!

Technorati Tags: hard drive crash, back ups, DiveImage XML, ghosting hard drive, free ghosting software

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There are two ways to solve your Norton 360 Woes…

1) The easiest method – Get rid of it and replace it with AVG antivirus software. (updated Oct. 7, 2011 – I USE THEIR PAID VERSION)

OR

2. Follow all of these steps to get yourself out of Norton 360 Hell.

Here are some simple steps that Symantec will not tell you in their FAQ. If you follow these steps you should be successful in your installation. All of this information is based on numerous online chats with Symantec Technical Support. These instructions are not for a computer novice. Use these instructions at your own risk.1) Background Processes

Certain background processes can prevent a successful installation of the new software. First thing I suggest is completely shutting down your old security suite.

Next you need to disable potential conflicting background processes. All I can do is show you what worked for me. I have no way of knowing what you run for software so if you run into problems, chances are you have a conflicting background process.

If that is the case then you will have to start going through each process, disabling it and trying the rest of the steps again. Any disabled processes should be re-enabled after you get Norton 360. To re-enable a process just undo the this step that I am about to show you.

To disable a process:Click ‘Start’ > ‘Run’ and type ‘msconfig’ (without quotations) into the textbox and click OK. The System Configuration Utility will launch. Click the ‘Services’ Tab.

In my case Symantec had me disable Ad-Aware 2007, Atheros Configuration Service, ATI HotKey Poller on this tab. Once these services are deselected then click on the ‘Startup’ Tab.

You may not have some of these items on your computer so don’t be alarmed if you do not see them listed. Symantec had me disable FreeRAM XP Pro, msmsgs, and qttask. FreeRAM XP Pro is a freeware RAM utility to help free up RAM on your computer. msmsgs is MSN Messenger, and qttask is QuickTime.

Once your selections are made then click the OK button. You will have to restart your computer. Undoubtedly you will get a pop-up window saying that your computer is in selective startup mode. Just ignore this message. Everything is fine.

2) Uninstall Existing Security Suite

Before attempting to install Norton 360, uninstall any Norton Security Software from your computer using their uninstall utility. Your original software came with a built-in uninstall option. Do not use that. Use the one available on their website. Depending on what you have, choose the correct uninstall by clicking here.

After running it you may have to restart your computer.

3) Search and destroy
Using the Search feature on your computer do a search for the word ‘Symantec’ and manually remove any remaining uninstalled components of the previous security suite.

Repeat process, searching on the word ‘Norton’.

4) Edit the Registry
The registry has to be manually edited to remove any remnants of the software. The uninstall that we just ran should have taken care of it but in Symantec fashion it may not have.

I tried to use CCleaner to edit the registry but it would not remove everything. I don’t know why, because I have used CCleaner for a long time and have never had a problem. I can’t prove it was screwy Symantec software, but I would bet my money on them as the culprit.

Make sure that you have permissions to edit the registry. To do this your Windows login account must be set to administrator status. Only an administrator can do this.

To edit the registry Click Start > Run and then type ‘Regedit’ (without quotations) into the textbox and then click the OK button. From the registry screen the first thing you MUST do is backup the registry.

Click File > Export and the Export pane opens.

Make sure that you set the export range to ‘All’, then navigate to the folder you want to save the registry to and click the ‘Save’ button.

Within the registry editor navigate to the Symantec folder. Click the (+) button to the left of ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’ to display the contents. Click the (+) button to the left of ‘Software’. Scroll down until you see ‘Symantec’. Hi-lite it and click Edit > Delete. You will be asked to confirm this. Click the ‘Yes’ button. Note: If ‘Symantec’ is not listed then that means the uninstall utility worked properly.

5) Install it now

You are now ready to install Norton 360. Just follow the on-screen instructions and the installation should go smoothly…hopefully!

6) Still having problems?

If the software gets to about 50-75% installed and then starts uninstalling itself and wanting to generate an error report, then you have a background process conflicting with it. That is what happened to me. It would not be so bad if the failed install and uninstall did not take 45 minutes each time. You need to find the conflict as described in Step 1.

Final Commentary

All of these problems could have been avoided if Symantec would not have used the consumer as a beta tester. This product is a good one but it was released before all bugs were worked out. This is typical of profit-driven companies trying to rush their products to market because of self-imposed deadlines.

As of posting, I see that they now have a new version in beta. I would suspect that they will attempt to address the concerns I have outlined in here. Let’s hope that this blog entry becomes obsolete quickly.

Power, Performance, Protection. ParetoLogic products put you in control of your PC’s performance and security

Thinking of buying Norton 360? Read these free reports so you are an informed buyer:

Symantec Suffers from Corporitis

Symantec – Good Products – Bad Delivery

Technorati Tags: Successful Norton 360 Installation, Norton 360, Norton 360 troubleshooting, Norton 360 problems, Norton, Symantec

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Shame on Symantec for releasing Norton 360, a new product that is nothing but a pain in the ass to buy and an even bigger pain in the ass to install. Today I will talk about the online purchase process of a Symantec product so you are aware of the pitfalls of these weasels.

If you are reading this because you are at wits end, with respect to your install, then tomorrow is for you. Hopefully my experience will help you to not have one that is similar.

Why the Purchase?

This all started when I made my first purchase using MyPowerMall.com. I wanted to test the mall system to see if I got credit for making the purchase. Since my Norton Security 2007 was expired, I figured that I needed it, so I did the the upgrade.

Up-sells, Symantec style, pissed me off
I conducted the transaction and the first thing I noticed is that when I clicked the ‘buy now’ button, I was offered a choice to buy Norton 360 for two years. No problem, I only wanted it for 1 year so I declined.

That is the way it should be. It is ‘professional’ and the generally accepted way to buy online. Offer an up-sell and let the buyer decide whether to buy it or not.

Next I added my order to the cart and immediately I was pissed off. Norton had added a $10.99 extended download service plan to my order. I was not asked if I wanted it. They just assumed I did and added it to my purchase.

This type of up-sell technique, although not illegal, is not ethical. I should be given the choice to add items to my purchase. Instead the onus is on me to remove it.

Before removing it, I had to see what was so good about this little gem that I simply had to have it. Clicking on the ‘>What is the Extended Download Service?’ link I saw that this was an option to extend the 60-day length of time I could download my purchased software from Symantec. WTF? I paid for it. It was mine. 60 days from now it will still be mine. I am paying for it for a year so I should have access to it for a year.

This is ludicrous. They expect me to pay them $10.99 so I can have the privilege to download my software outside the ’60-day’ window they decided to give me. Kiss my blue monkey butt Symantec. I promptly clicked the little garbage can icon to the left of this item and removed it. Fitting that the icon is a garbage can!

You think that was bad. It gets worse.

Beware of the Symantec Auto-Renewal Policy

This was a shocker. In order to buy from them I have to agree to their auto-renewal policy. I could not opt out prior to purchase. This is bad…really really bad. Symantec you should be ashamed of yourself. There is no need for this type of marketing from what I had previously considered a professional corporation.

Norton Ongoing Protection

By placing this order, you consent to Symantec automatically renewing your annual subscription. Symantec will notify you by email prior to expiration of your current subscription. Do nothing and the regular subscription renewal price (plus applicable tax) will be automatically charged using the payment method (e.g. credit or debit card) provided. You authorize Symantec to use contact and billing information provided during purchase activity to charge each renewal. You also authorize Digital River, Symantec’s authorized online reseller, to transfer the contact and billing information provided for your purchase today to Symantec for this purpose.

If you do not want to be automatically charged, you may discontinue the auto renewal feature of Norton Ongoing Protection at any time after completing this order by following the instructions contained on the Symantec website and in the confirmation email.

Oh good! Fantastic! I can choose to opt out of your auto-renewal policy AFTER I make the purchase. News flash dipsticks I am supposed to be offered a chance to do this BEFORE I make my purchase.

Symantec your sales techniques and marketing strategies show that you have placed profits over customer service. The only reason you do this is because you hope that unsuspecting individuals will not notice until it is too late. You are deserving of the title weasels!

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Symantec Suffers from Corporitis

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