Avast need to bring support in house or get a bad reputation

As an Avast Pro user I called their UK support number to sort out a problem I felt may be with Avast. I’m not sure yet, but we will see without the help of the Avast telephone support.

As a person with reasonable IT experience, I was concerned at what occurred during the call and felt that someone with less experience may be persuaded to part with money when there was no need to. I was persuaded to let them have access to my desktop.
The guy ran what he said was an avast diagnostic. This showed that “you are missing important security and stability updates” for Win 7. Not true!
He then looked in Window’s System Information utility, chose “Windows Error Reporting” and began to exclaim at the messages and tell me that I had had a number of “blue screens”. Not true!
He told me that there were a number of problems with Windows on my PC and that it was unstable.
He then said that they had Microsoft engineers in the office right now who for £75 an incident or £129 a year would sort out my machine for me.
I declined his offer and removed traces of his visit to my PC. He basically didn’t help at all with my Avast issue, saying that Windows needed to be fixed before they could see about Avast.
Not good.

The best support can be found here on the forum, and it’s free ;D

The forum is also insufficient for professionals in need of an immediate response. I’ve never had need to use Avast’s phone support but if I ever did I would be very irate at the treatment described.

You’ll get a response here quicker than anywhere else.

And years later the Avast phone scam continues. Come on Avast. Do something about it. Been reported too many times here over the years.

They already have a bad reputation… plenty of complaints on BBB

Yes, and the purportedly “quick” forum response time is up to five and a half hours and counting.

I sometimes do service calls for clients that are a two to three hour drive away and who can not afford to be without their computers for two days. If this was for such a client rather than for myself my entire day would be shot, the client would be getting stuck with a huge bill for me sitting around and twiddling my thumbs, I would likely have to go home and drive back to the site the following day burning additional fuel, and at some point I would have to call the other clients I had scheduled for that day and tell them I am not coming till at least late the next day. In reality I would likely eat the lost hours and the extra fuel costs (because I’m not a bastard to my clients) and end up giving a discount to at least some of those who were forced to wait… I doubt I would make a dime for the entire mess.

Needless to say… that’s absurdly unacceptable. Which is why if I ever needed support for an Avast product (or any other product) on behalf of a client I would only consider asking on forums if the client wasn’t in a hurry and the clients location was very close. I can’t reasonably expect an immediate response from volunteers (and I don’t)… but sometimes I need an immediate response.

But even all that aside. I find it unsettling that a software security company would use a call center whose practices mirror the behavior of the very mal-ware their products are intended to protect against. I understand not to expect high levels of quality from free support for a free product… but I do expect honest and integrity especially, again, as the company in question here specializes in software security.

That the main alternative to being lied to and manipulated out of money is to come to forums where these dishonest practices are responded to with dismissal and the wait time for help can top five hours… it doesn’t look good, to say the least.

Report your experience to Adam Riley: riley[at]avast[dot]com