I've been sitting here with McAfee support for nearly an hour (online chat). And I have gotten nowhere. First we established that I had a program of theirs (10 minutes). Then I got them to understand that the problem was a program crashing. But then they got off track and began talking about the wrong program, so I steered them back on track. Apparently this revelation was very stunning, because their end was quiet for about 5 minutes. And in the past 20 minutes I have answered the same questions three times, worded differently by McAfee three times.

And if that sounds bad, just try the email support. I said I had a crashing problem. They suggested that I pay them thirty dollars. In exchange they would help me uninstall the program. This was not helpful for the following reasons: 1) I can uninstall it myself; and 2) It does not solve my problem.

Since McAfee's online chat responses are quite short, I would guess that he is supporting, at minimum, 25 other people. How else could it take this long? Either that or McAfee doesn't mind if support workers only support three users per day.

My sanity is being tested. After literally 10 minutes of waiting he told me that my problem is being escalated to the research and development department. Ooo, a program is crashing. MAJOR PROBLEM. If, god forbid, their poorly coded heap of trash CRASHES, you have to go straight to the top!

This is just one of the many times I wonder why exactly I have not gone out and purchased a program not programmed by "slow" two year old children.

:uzi: McAfee :smash:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I'M GOING TO GO CRAZY! HEY MR MCAFEE! HOW MUCH YOU GETTIN' PAID LOSER?! MINIMUM WAGE? Well THAT WOULD EXPLAIN YOUR GROSS INCOMPETENCE!

Okay, calm down 'treats! Its not his fault his entire technical documentation consists of six documents, half of which deal with installing the product. BUT JUST LOOK AT HIM. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN COPS?!?!?! CONVICT 94 HE IS!

And WHY exactly does it take you ten minutes to send me TEN WORDS?!?! I COULD TYPE FASTER IF I WERE A RETARDED FIVE YEAR OLD IN A COMA, YOU FOOL! MAYBE if you were talking to a number of people LESS THAN the national population of Iran, you could type faster than what I calculate as ONE WORD PER MILLENNIUM!

Man.


Appendix A: 2/3 of the time I have found a virus on my computer, it was found by an online virus scanner. Not of course McAfee. It seems to me that the only way they make money is by coding crappy products, and then bundleing them with every computer sold, past present and future. Then when it has a problem they provide crappy online and email support, therefore making the only available option calling them at a rate of 2 dollars per minute.


Rrr.

hey man at least its not gateway
i had a keyboard break one time
and the tech instructed me to restart in dos and type
fdisk

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Fun gateway story:

Friend has sounds problem, takes PC to Gateway store. They "fix" it and say that they have NOT, no no no, opened the computer. He brings PC home and finds that it HAS been opened, it has a new, different model soundcard, with NO joystick port. He opens the CD drive; the copy of the Sims that was in there is scratched beyond use. It was perfect when he turned in the machine.

Ain't gateway great.


And more edited in McAfee "fun".

With rounding, it has been two hours.

Fun Dell story from about 2 years ago:

My computer wouldn't boot into Windows (but it would go through the BIOS and everything), so I called Dell. I told them my problem and they put me on hold for about 10 minutes (ARGH! I hate that). When they got back, they told me to boot from the Dell resource CD-ROM and then type "zztop" at the DOS prompt.

But little did I know that zztop was a utility to perform a low-level format of your HD...

So I did that, and they told me to hit 1 to begin the repair process, then enter to confirm. A progress bar lurched across my screen with the text "Analyzing Hard Drive" above it. Nothing harmful. Then we went on to stage 2.

In stage 2, the text above the progress bar was a bit more menacing. It read "Formatting Hard Drive." It was still asking for my confirmation, so I asked the Dell tech "So, this won't format my hard drive or anything, will it?" and he replied "Nope, it's just checking it." I confirmed that it did nothing to my HD and then hit enter to begin the process.

It finally reached 100% after what seemed like hours. It told me that it "Finished Formatting Disk." Remembering what the Dell tech told me before, and my disbelief, I asked him again: "Ya know, it does say 'Finished Formatting Disk.' Are you SURE this isn't a disk formatting tool? I want to keep all of my files, obviously..."

There was silence. Long silence. Then he finally said, "Of course it's a disk formatting tool. That's what you wanted, right?"

From that day on, I've never forgotten to back up any of my files. Losing 2 years of work will do that to you.

Heres a great Gateway story...

I'm suppose to have a Gateway P3 700 Win98... The soundcard messed up in it so we took it in after I managed to back up my files. It took them 3 months to fix it, so I get it back and they took my memory and put a different RAM board in it, Different Processor, and they took my cooling fan out... wtf?

Just recently... err.... not recently, the same computer that went into the shop had to go right back in for a HD & CD-ROM failure. I still have yet to get it back and it has been in the shop for more than 5 months! They gave me a loaner that has a Celeron 733 with WinodwsME, and a CD-ROM that cracks disks (I have 5 cracked disks). Even this loaner computer is beginning to **** up (the screen keeps turning blue. The monitor is fine it does the same thing to every other monitor you hook up to it).

Heres my breakdown of my experince through Gateway:

:puke:
:angry: :uzi: GATEWAY :smash: :angry:

I have never hated a company as much as this... I highly recommend against Gateway!!! Avoid them like very cheap "unlimited" hosts! :D