Author Topic: A funny story about my experience with Avast "Customer Care"  (Read 2183 times)

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Offline GreatBigBore

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So a few weeks ago I went online to buy Avast's virus thingy. I found that Avast Security Pro seems to be just what I need. So I bought it. Had a little bit of trouble with the invoice, but a quick call to "Customer Care" and all was well.

Until I started getting advertisements popping up on my desktop, for other Avast products. Wait a second. This is what companies do when people use the free version of the software. I paid for this. Why am I getting these advertisements? That's really tacky business practice. But anyway, I'll just go into Preferences and turn off the advertisements. But no, in preferences, there's nothing about advertisements. Just "infos", "warnings", and "alerts". No definitions anywhere, nothing about the nature of the messages I would be disabling. That seems like a ploy to keep me from disabling any of them, for fear of missing something important. So not only am I looking at ads in an app that I paid for, I can't simply turn them off, without doing some research. This is not ok.

So I send an email to "Customer Care", asking how to turn the advertisements off. I got the following response from "Mariana":

  • Click the Avast Menu bar icon and select Open Avast from the context menu.
  • Go to Preferences â–¸Miscellaneous
  • Deselect option "Show offers for our other products"

But no, I had already been all over the Preferences menu, and there is only "infos", "warnings", and "alerts". And they're not on the "Miscellaneous" tab. I guess "Mariana" is using an old version. When I explained that her instructions didn't align with my experience, she never responded. I waited 24h, solicited a response again from "Mariana", and got back silence.

So I decided to end my relationship with Avast, requested a refund, and uninstalled Avast Security Pro (according to the instructions provided), and pointed my browser at totalav.com. All was well.

Until I started getting popup messages from Avast on my desktop, telling me I need to clean my hard drive, and I can click here if I want to buy their hard drive cleaner. Huh? Maybe I didn't do the uninstall properly. I'll do it again. The popups came at random times, so I don't know whether it worked or not, until a few days later when I got another one. What to do now? I don't know. I guess I'll try to see whether "Mariana" has any other suggestions.

In my message to Avast "Customer Care", I described the problem, including the part where I had uninstalled Avast Security Pro. This time, I was answered by "Marin":

  • Please open Avast and click "Menu" > "Settings" > "General"  > "Personal Privacy"
  • Within "Personal Privacy", please deselect options "Show offers for our other products" and "Show offers for 3rd-party products" and click "OK".

Uh-huh. Open the app that I've uninstalled. Ok. I made the mistake of answering sarcastically, asking whether I should install the app in order to do this. "Marin" responded:

Quote
I cancelled the notifications from our system regarding the product alerts and special offers as well as news an tips. You can install your Avast again and enter the same activation code, due to the fact that your Cleanup subscription expires on 21st May.

At about this time, I began to wonder whether "Mariana" and "Marin" are bots. But no, I told myself, a bot would have given better "Customer Care" than this.

I tried one more time, asking "Marin" to deliver my message to a supervisor. "He" didn't deliver my message. Rather, "he" suggested that I download the free version of Avast, and use its preferences to disable all alerts. (All. You can either get important messages and advertisements, or you can disable advertisements and also disable important messages. Tacky.)

I never heard back from "Marin" or anyone else at Avast. I realized that it had been a while since I rebooted my laptop, so I figured maybe that was the problem. So I rebooted, and hoped that would be the end of it.

No. I'm still getting these blasted popups. And am I really going to install another Avast product on my machine because "Marin" thinks it might work, and if it doesn't, he'll be glad to escalate my problem to the support team? No thank you. I asked to speak to a supervisor before, and I'm asking again. This is unacceptable. I want to know how to make this stop, and reinstalling an app from a tacky place like Avast is strictly a last resort.

And now I guess I'll do exactly that, because I just got another popup.

Offline Pondus

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Re: A funny story about my experience with Avast "Customer Care"
« Reply #1 on: May 08, 2019, 08:22:36 AM »
Tried this?   

Using the Uninstall Utility for Avast Antivirus
https://support.avast.com/en-eu/article/Uninstall-Antivirus-Utility



Offline Pondus

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Re: A funny story about my experience with Avast "Customer Care"
« Reply #2 on: May 08, 2019, 08:27:45 AM »
Quote
So I decided to end my relationship with Avast, requested a refund, and uninstalled Avast Security Pro (according to the instructions provided), and pointed my browser at totalav.com. All was well.

Total AV - Is it a Scam?   
https://malwaretips.com/threads/total-av-is-it-a-scam.80362/


https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/230630-removal-instructions-for-totalav-antivirus-2018/



« Last Edit: May 08, 2019, 08:30:09 AM by Pondus »

Offline GreatBigBore

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Re: A funny story about my experience with Avast "Customer Care"
« Reply #3 on: May 08, 2019, 11:42:28 PM »
Yeah, I tried to find an uninstall utility, but I could only find the one you have referenced, which is for Windows. I couldn't find one for Mac. As for TotalAV being a scam, that is yet another tacky business practice on the part of Avast, as far as I can tell. Cheers

Offline bob3160

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Re: A funny story about my experience with Avast "Customer Care"
« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2019, 12:51:33 AM »
Yeah, I tried to find an uninstall utility, but I could only find the one you have referenced, which is for Windows. I couldn't find one for Mac. As for TotalAV being a scam, that is yet another tacky business practice on the part of Avast, as far as I can tell. Cheers
Installing Malware like Total AV was your choice. It has nothing to do with Avast.
Had you posted in the Mac section, you might have gotten help from someone that uses your OS.
See if this helps you: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6185527
You'll find the Mac section here: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=5.0
Free Security Seminar: https://bit.ly/bobg2023  -  Important: http://www.organdonor.gov/ -- My Web Site: http://bob3160.strikingly.com/ - Win 11 Pro v22H2 64bit, 16 Gig Ram, 1TB SSD, Avast Free 23.5.6066, How to Successfully Install Avast http://goo.gl/VLXdeRepair & Clean Install https://goo.gl/t7aJGq -- My Online Activity https://bit.ly/BobGInternet

Offline Pondus

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Re: A funny story about my experience with Avast "Customer Care"
« Reply #5 on: May 09, 2019, 07:22:54 AM »
Quote
Yeah, I tried to find an uninstall utility, but I could only find the one you have referenced, which is for Windows. I couldn't find one for Mac.
aha, so you have a Mac .... i asume you said that when contacting Customer Care ?



Quote
As for TotalAV being a scam, that is yet another tacky business practice on the part of Avast, as far as I can tell. Cheers
How is that?     The links i posted has nothing to do with avast


Also note that TotalAV is not a member at www.virustotal.com
And it has not been tested by any of the big testing organisations like

AV compare  https://www.av-comparatives.org/
AV test  https://www.av-test.org/en/
MRG effitas  https://www.mrg-effitas.com/





« Last Edit: May 09, 2019, 07:29:59 AM by Pondus »

Offline GreatBigBore

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Re: A funny story about my experience with Avast "Customer Care"
« Reply #6 on: May 09, 2019, 08:12:41 AM »
If "Customer Care" didn't ask me specifically, or the form I filled out didn't ask what OS I was using, then no, I probably didn't mention that I was running their software on a mac. That has absolutely nothing to do with them refusing to respond to me, or refusing to escalate the problem when it was appropriate to do so.

As for the links you posted, I had no more way of knowing whether those were legitimate than TotalAV. However, you have done me a great service by posting the newest set of links. When I tried to find something like that (before I entered the Avast Morass), I could only find urls like "top10reviews", that kind of thing. I'll ditch TotalAV and find someone who's recommended by those orgs. You've done me a far better service than anything I've gotten from the bots in "Customer Care". For free, even.

Peace and luck
--Rob

Offline BWhit

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Re: A funny story about my experience with Avast "Customer Care"
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2019, 02:18:39 PM »
Hi GreatBigBore,

I am very sorry that you have not received the standard of customer support that you should expect from Avast.

Your original issue with the advertisements still being shown even though you had a paid version of the app sounds as if the app were not fully activated.

I apologize that checking whether the app was activated correctly did not occur to my colleague - at that point, she instead escalated your issue internally (which is why she did not respond herself). I'm afraid that your following request for the license to be refunded meant that your case was diverted from our technical support to our billing team to process the refund for you.

I sincerely apologize for the incorrect information and instructions that were initially provided to you to resolve the current situation (receiving advertisements despite the application being uninstalled).

I have now sent a further reply directly to the ticket you have within our support system explaining potential next steps to remove these remaining adverts.