Is Avast Support phone line just a sales line now - shame on you Avast!!

Hi, I am a computer repair professional and I had a customer call me today because she was getting a popup from Avast Antivirus telling her she was in trial mode and it would expire in a few days. She told me that she called Avast support and the support person promptly connected to her computer and did some investigations.

He then went on to try the hard sell - telling her that she has lots of files in her temporary internet cache and this was a bad thing. Well - what rubbish!! The cache is designed to make browsing faster - especially on a slow connection and her connection is only 1.5Mbps. He suggested that she purchase some more software from Avast.

He did not even address the question of why the customer was getting the error message when she believed that she had at least 3 months left on her subscription. She brought her computer around to me and showed me the saved email confirming her subscription. It had an attached LIC file stating 15th Feb 2015. I double clicked on it and it updated Avast and all is good.

How can your support staff have such a monumental FAIL. Apparently the man told her that “I cannot understand why it is saying it will expire”. The fact that she has employed my professional services (because she felt a little threatened and worried she was being conned) has now cost her 1 hour of my charges which exceeds your annual licence fee.

Shame on you Avast!!! I expect you will be wanting to make a gesture to the customer to compensate her for your support desk incompetence and for the costs she has incurred by having me sort the mess out for her because you could not.

Perhaps you should focus on helping customers with their genuine enquiries rather than trying to sell them more things. You are meant to be the support desk not the sales desk!

Shame on you!

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

I’ll do that right now. Thanks for the heads-up.

You’re welcome.

Done. Let’s see what Mr Riley has to say about the situation. I will report his relies back on this forum should I ever get one.

Hi,

That person has left the organization apparently. My email was picked up by:

Vojtech Nekvapil
Partner Sales and Support Manager

He is going to investigate for my customer.

Cheers,
Tarka

Thanks, good to know.

Is anyone aware, Is there confirmation that Adam Riley has left Avast?

https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=111435.0

That link does not confirm that Adam Riley left avast. ???

I’m not sure if he has left avast, the last I was aware he was the Manager, Global Services and Vojta Nekvapil - was the 3rd Party support Manager.

Thanks David.
I would hope the same responsiveness and actions will be continued?

Adam Riley has left avast! for NCR.

http://cz.linkedin.com/Adam Rileypub/adam-riley/5/a1/845

Don’t get through on that link,.

Sorry,
This should work.

http://cz.linkedin.com/pub/adam-riley/5/a1/845

Thanks Zorgon.

+1 :slight_smile:

A lot of people have left avast! in the last couple of months!

Care to elaborate.

You make it sound like something sinister which it is NOT. :slight_smile:
A lot of people leave from a lot of companies all the time.
Sometimes for advancements, and sometimes for other reasons.
I know I’ve had more that one job in my lifetime. :slight_smile:
(I’ve also never not had a job unless it was supposed to be that way.)