<rant>It’s nice to get an email from a vendor to let you know your support is expiring so you can renew. But Symantec is taking this way too far! Since I work at Lakeview and the Indiana District denomination office, there are two separate Symantec contracts I manage, and they expire about five months apart. Each time, I start getting reminders something like 90 days out. And then 60 days, 30 days…I don’t know exactly what the frequency is, but it’s often. Still, reminders are good, right? Then I renewed the contract for another year. But Symantec STILL sends me “Support Expiration Notice” emails! “Blah blah blah expired please renew blah blah.” OK, now you’ve gone from useful but maybe a bit annoying to completely unhelpful and rediculous! How hard is it to update your internal system when the contract is renewed (it’s tied to a contract number and everything, don’t tell me you can’t figure out that I’ve renewed!) and either stop sending emails or send a thank you?
Instead, they’ve (finally) added a nice note to their email which says, “If you have already renewed these products or are working with your reseller, please disregard this notice or click here to ensure you don’t receive future notifications.” Stupid to make me do this, but sure…I click on it. It opens a new email (not a website) addressed to symantec@customermining.com (let the spam bots have it, what do I care?) pre-filled with something like this (I’ve x’d out the fields they filled in for privacy):
Subject: My Symantec Support Contracts Are Already Renewed
My Symantec Support Contracts have already been renewed. By sending this email, I will ensure that I will not receive future renewal notifications for the products listed in my renewal agreement number indicated below. I understand that if I have other Symantec products with support contracts up for renewal, I may receive renewal notifications for those products in the future.
NAME/COMPANY NAME
Agreement#: xxxxxx and Customer #: xxxxx
Original Order #: xxxxxx
Ref #: xxxxxxx
Support Exp Date: xxxxxx
Source Code: xxxxx
Why on earth do they make me go through this when they should already know I renewed!? I even got a call from Symantec right around the expiration date about this exact same thing, and I told the person that we had just renewed already–just like the email, a phone call that they should never have made. And yet it’s still in their email system!
Yeah, I know, it’s just a few emails. But it’s annoying, and I’ve been through it twice now! You’re a big company, Symantec. Please get your act together. Small things count. </rant>
Very interesting indeed! You being a non-profit organization they hound like crazy to get you to renew, but I being a full-on for-profit company have never received so much as a peep from them about our contract. I would have to dig through my files and records to see when we last re-upped our yearly contract just to check if we are still current.
This is an easy problem to solve…. stop using their products. :)
@Chris Does that mean you’re volunteering to donate the difference so I can afford to go Sophos? :-) Believe me, I tried to replace Symantec at both offices this year and budgets did not allow. Will likely push again next year; just renewed Symantec for one year. To get anywhere near the same pricing I have to go four years prepaid (three plus one free) with Sophos!
And it wouldn’t solve my problem…they’d still send me reminders, even if I canceled :-)
How can I stop the Windows Vista Semantec renewal notice, I don’t want to renew, but it keeps asking everytime I logon.
I’d uninstall it, personally. My renewal reminder was an email from Symantec as we have the corporate version. I was glad to tell them this year we’re not renewing!