I just had a customer come into my shop, telling me that when he spoke to the Avast tech support on the phone yesterday (Dec 9, 2013), he ended up with someone he described as having "that same foreign accent you hear from the computer company."
He was having problems downloading the avast installer file (it would hang at 99.8%). He had just purchased Avast Pro, couldn't download the file, so he called to get assistance. They required remote access to his computer, accomplished through some program downloaded in internet explorer (not windows remote assistance), pulled the "Look, the event viewer has a critical error!" crap, told him "All your driver files are corrupted" and tried to charge him $179 to "fix" it for him, with a one year guarantee that "it won't happen again". When he declined, they cleared the internet history, deleted the files, and wished him a good day before transferring him back to another person who told him he needed to purchase another copy of Avast pro to fix his problem.
He showed me the number he dialed, in his cell phone call history, and I can confirm that it is the avast number listed on their site.
This is a recurring problem with Avast, the antivirus is of high quality, but they keep hiring telephone support people who scam their customers. This is harmful to the image of Avast, and harmful to those of us who are tech professionals who have recommended avast to our customers.
Everyone should probably steer clear of the phone support until avast can assure everyone that they have fired their current phone support people.
