Is Bitdefender In Trouble As A Company?

I can't for the life of me figure out what is going in with this company.

Service and communications are becoming almost non-existent.

They will sell you a product that they know will not work on your platform.

When there are technical issues they make promises to follow up, then you never hear from them again. Attempts to follow up from your end are literally ignored.

When there are licensing issues they take your information and promise to follow through, but do not.

When you telephone tech support they put you on hold, then after a while disconnect you!

I am a reseller and had some clients on BitDefender. The service has become so inept that it has cost me a lot of money and embarrassment.

In my experience, these are red flags--signs of a company that is no longer stable. For this reason I have begun moving my clients to other products, and when my own licenses expire--which I can't wait for--I absolutely will not renew. There are plenty of other products to do the job. BitDefender is not worth the aggravation.

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stratoc

i wondered the same, i could only use BD for 4 days and un-installed because it simply wouldnt work properly on my system, after countless ignores to all my messages (the only reply i had was from someone on this forum), i have had to ask my bank to investigate. they have refunded me pending an investigation. i bought BD because i thought they had a good rep. it does indeed seem they is nobody they at all.

PS i know it's only chea.p but it's a principle thing, nobody steals from me:)

unknown

I can't for the life of me figure out what is going in with this company.

Service and communications are becoming almost non-existent.

They will sell you a product that they know will not work on your platform.

When there are technical issues they make promises to follow up, then you never hear from them again. Attempts to follow up from your end are literally ignored.

When there are licensing issues they take your information and promise to follow through, but do not.

When you telephone tech support they put you on hold, then after a while disconnect you!

I am a reseller and had some clients on BitDefender. The service has become so inept that it has cost me a lot of money and embarrassment.

In my experience, these are red flags--signs of a company that is no longer stable. For this reason I have begun moving my clients to other products, and when my own licenses expire--which I can't wait for--I absolutely will not renew. There are plenty of other products to do the job. BitDefender is not worth the aggravation.

RobK, first of all thank you for your feedback; this is very valuable to us, as this also shows that what we are working on makes sense in regards to increasing availability and responsiveness.

I will add that at the moment we are working on some projects that will improve our communication with the customers with a due date of ~ 1 month (if not sooner - for auto-renewal, for the phone support and for the email response time).

In the meantime, as an alternative for the phone support, you can go to the web online submitting form at: https://myaccount.bitdefender.com/site/MyAc...contactEmail/1/ and use it to drop us an email.

Thank you.

robertkn

RobK, first of all thank you for your feedback; this is very valuable to us, as this also shows that what we are working on makes sense in regards to increasing availability and responsiveness.

I will add that at the moment we are working on some projects that will improve our communication with the customers with a due date of ~ 1 month (if not sooner - for auto-renewal, for the phone support and for the email response time).

In the meantime, as an alternative for the phone support, you can go to the web online submitting form at: https://myaccount.bitdefender.com/site/MyAc...contactEmail/1/ and use it to drop us an email.

Thank you.

I believe that your response illustrates not only BitDefender's lack of concern for their customers, but also the inability to even comprehend what BitDefender's customers are communicating to them. You suggest email as an alternative form of communication.

1. I, and my customers, have sent multiple emails to support regarding ongoing issues. They are being utterly ignored.

2. Just days ago I had a session with on-line chat regarding a simple licensing issue. I made it very clear to the rep that there have been some problems with the installation and this was important. She promised to forward the issue to "her colleagues" for prompt follow up. There has been no follow up at all, and it has been days.

3. The same day I had placed a telephone call to tech support. After being on hold for several minutes I was disconnected. This has happened more than once.

Aside from being unbusinesslike, this shows a lack of respect, not only for your customers, but for fellow business people who have, in good faith, brought you business.

I don't know whether you have any more "alternatives," but the only one I see is moving on to a product provided by a professionally run organization.

unknown

" /> Am I the only one that appreciates Bit Defender? It is by far the best anti-virus that I have ever tried. I've tried AVG, Avast, AntiVir, PC Tools. It has more features than any of them, and is cheaper than most programs that require a subscription. It also scans for spyware, and has hourly updates. I HAVE NO PROBLEMS WITH IT ON MY COMPUTER, AND IT USES LESS RESOURCES THAN ANY OTHER ANTI-VIRUS THAT I HAVE EVER USED. My only problem, if you can call it that, was finding how to cancel out of the Auto Update feature. Now that I have succeeded in doing that, I have no problems. Thanks for the great anti-virus program, Bit Defender!

Nisei

This topic is clearly about customer service and communications. Why do you feel the need to defend the product itself? That's got nothing to do with it.

Bob.F

I agree.

Tink

Hello Rob,

I think you might be very correct...I think there are some big problems and they have probably been happening over a number of months. There 2009 version has seemed to have some big problems -- and there have been other wierd signs in the last number of months. They have gone from a very responsive worthwhile company to something very irresponsible.

a. tried to contact Chat this AM, they came in, said "will contact you by email" and disconnected.

b. no emails yet

c. could not get back into chat, tried over and over, I was sent to an email window -- no chat

d. no email

e. their web venue to get into chat is broken (using two browsers), their scroll bars disappear cannot move around window -- obviously not well done or cared for

f. I've been on hold with a technical support number for nearly 30 minutes now

I'm going to be calling their sales department and I think I might start working my way to finding someone to investigate them too.

unknown

Hello everybody.

We strongly believe that only listening to our customers helps us improve our service offerings. Our mindset is to find means of improvement from one day to another. Even as we speak we are implementing several new things to allow us be better. Unfortunately it takes a bit longer than we would want them to take. Nevertheless they'll be there, just as I already mentioned, within the next month.

RobK, we will contact you directly early next week in order to investigate what happens with your reports.

Thank you and all the best.

Valentin

Tink

Hello Rob and Valentin,

Thanks for jumping in Valentin -- I'm sure that Rob will appreciate the follow up.

Yesterday I investigated and was happy to be put in contact with Vitor Souza and Valentin with the good help of Neil J. Rubenking of PCMag (http://www.pcmag.com). I drew Vitor and Valentin's attention to this thread and a number of our concerns.

Vitor assured me that the opposite was true with the company, i.e. they are not in trouble, they have had a tremendous and sudden growth spurt over several months. Evidently they have had floods of new customers due to excellent product reviews being published and the Conficker worm tool that they made available -- people followed up with installing their software. The increase in user base has occurred in many countries.

Apparently the major problem appears to be running to fill the capabilities gap. They are working to do that -- but it takes a bit of time to put things in action. They have kicked a number of projects into gear and are confident that they will be able to address the issues by mid-May, as well as being better prepared for the future.

They have heard our concerns, we have heard their present challenge. We all go from there. My hope is that they will be able to rise to the need sooner rather than later -- I understand their challenge, as well as ours -- particularly those of us who have already paid for our products and need support presently. I'd really like to be able to stick with this product, having enjoyed it for quite a while now...

ptamper

Which makes the appaling customer services even more unacceptable.

Glad to know the company is making lots of money. Pity none of that seems to have gone towards fulfilling the advertised promise of 24/7 customer support. How many months does it take to employ IT savvy people to sit next to a phone?

I'm another customer who is counting the minutes down to the end of my subscription.

Vitor assured me that the opposite was true with the company, i.e. they are not in trouble, they have had a tremendous and sudden growth spurt over several months. Evidently they have had floods of new customers due to excellent product reviews being published and the Conficker worm tool that they made available -- people followed up with installing their software. The increase in user base has occurred in many countries.

Tacosmon

Even as short as a month ago, I was receiving excellent help from BD staff to emails or online.

But things indeed seem to have changed.

If the change is due to management directives or new procedures (manual or software or new hardware....) they Are Not working.

I sent an email for help a few days ago, and there has been no response other than an automated promise to respond within 24-48 hours, and a spam response to my forum inbox by a person(?) who was deregistered from the forum the very next minute. HAS A bug gotten through BD defenses? Maybe they are too busy fighting an internal fire?

The more I think about it, the less I like how customer service is being handled by BD.

BTW Right now, there is no obvious link from Support to the forum (not even on the site map). It takes an internet search engine to find it.

Someone at BD is Not looking at the big picture.

Tink

Hello "ptamper" and "The Taco Monster"

I have brought notice to your responses/messages in this thread from those with whom I am presently in touch. I certainly see what I think are your valid concerns/comments and have enunciated them as I feel that they are reasonable.

I have made what I think are some reasonable sincere/honest feedback comments based on your feelings/thoughts and mine. We are all in this together -- I feel like my particular needs are met at this moment, but I can't/don't forget those whose are not yet. Yes, I understand the BD challenge, but I also understand that we have supported them with our purchases.