Black Screen, Hard Sell Mails & Support Playing Naïve

First: This is not just about technical problems, but also about customer relationship management. It usually takes a long time to increase my blood pressure to the max.

I made the mistake to renew my BD license too early, being very content with Internet Security 2014 for quite a year. With the renewal came IS 2015– and the black screen problem, which is commonly known, as I’ve learned in this part of the forum.

(http://forum.bitdefender.com/index.php?showtopic=55388&st=0)

So I contacted the German support (please excuse my rusty English). Boot up delay had increased to nearly three minutes (from 50 seconds with BD IS 2014). But they didn’t mention the black screen bug although this problem was discussed here since August - alt least. Instead, they did send me on a journey to scan this, send protocols, disable or remove that, send protocols… All things that did not cause any problem with BD IS 2014. And actions that took many hours of my time. Looking back I feel like I have been sent on a march trough the desert...

Even when I found and mentioned the discussion in this English forum here, there was no response from the German support to that point. No word, that this is a bug, well known to BD. No word, that a patch might be in progress. They just ignored it, playing on time. Otherwise, I could have asked for refunding. Because the 2015 version is slowing down my system in a way, no other software did since the days of Windows 3.0…. But now I’ve seem to have passed the deadline.

But they made pressure in another way. Although I was an early bird in renewing my license, BD started to send an endless stream of renewal reminders, which became more and more aggressive and annoying. Every time I contacted the German support, I asked them to stop it. For more than two weeks they ignored my request. So I’ve received “Your protection will expire in 30 days…”, “Your protection will expire in 20 days…”, “There are only 10 days left to renew your license…”, “Your protection will expire tomorrow…”, “Your protection has expired. You are without protection now”. Even when in fact my license is still valid for more than 400 days… Now, they only suggested I should unsubscribe their e-mails by myself…

What a mess. I had 1 license for 1 year which I renewed 1 time. That already seems to be too complicated for the BD database – or will they just force me to buy more licenses?

Looking back, silly me should have let IS 2014 expire and install the trial-version of IS 2015. And delete it, after experiencing the black-screen- bug. That way, I would have saved my money. At least I could ensure that auto-renewal is deactivated, so there will be no IS 2016 bill popping up by surprise…

Malware protection is a matter of trust. But how to think about a company playing cat and mouse with a customer? A customer database, which can’t handle a one-time renewal? A spamming hard sell which can’t be corrected by them?

I’m deleting BD IS 2015 now and will unsubscribe their spam. By trusting the support, I’ve lost my chance to get my money back. Bitdefender 2014 turned to Bitdesaster 2015. It’s a shame, but they’ve also turned me from a happy customer into a deeply disappointed user, who will ‘recommend’ them the other way round now….

My ticket numbers were:

2014092612500002

2014100707240001