The Guarantee - I Want My Money Back

I simply want my money back for a product that does not do what it should and is unfit for purpose. I purchased Bitdefender because of very good reviews - and the offer of a 30 day money back guarantee clinched it for me. I have made contact with the Support three times now to no avail. Here is the second email. The third one in January was merely a reminder that I had not heard from them.

START

Friday, 19th December

“Dear Sir,

I wish to ask for a return of my money. I purchased Bitdefender on 22 November 2008 and I have had nothing but trouble since.

First, after installing on a Windows Vista computer it refused to open the “Show” window and so I was unable to alter any of the settings for such things as the scheduled regular scan.

Second, it got corrupted on my laptop (Windows XP) and screwed it up somehow – I emailed the problem with a description of what had happened to Support but never received a reply.

Eventually I was forced to uninstall the program and put a different AV program on. This found and cleaned up several viruses; I feel that one of them may have been responsible for the corruption of Bitdefender that I had reported in vain.

I then decided to give Bitdefender another go and tried to reinstall it on the laptop. It refused to install and told me that an earlier version had not been removed properly and I had to run the uninstall tool. This I did. I was then informed that I had to run an online antivirus scan, which I also did. No viruses were found. However, Bitdefender still refused to install on the basis of an earlier version not being removed.

This is the error message: “The installation cannot be finalized because the installer has detected a previous version that was not uninstalled properly. Please run the manual uninstall tool first (Available here http:\www.bitdefender.com/uninstall) and run the installer again.”

I then tried the whole process over, ran the uninstall tool again, and did another online virus check - the result was the same. It still will not install. I have now wasted over five hours going through the reinstall process twice to no avail.

Given the fact that I have had no reply from Support, I cannot alter the settings on my desktop computer, and I cannot even install the program on my laptop, I ask you to refund me my money - £19.95 ASAP.

I can promise you that I shall remove the program from my desktop computer; for one thing, a scheduled scan in the middle of the night is hopeless for me, as the computer is always turned off then. For another, whatever new AV program I select will naturally go on both my computers.

I attach below a copy of my original purchase order, dated 22 November and look forward to hearing from you and receiving my money back.”

FINISH

To bring the story up to date, I finally had to reformat my hard drive and then reinstall all my programs just to get rid of Bitdefender. Three days down the drain by the time I had finished all this. I am now using AVG along with Malarebytes and this combination works for me.

HOW CAN I GET MY MONEY BACK? Do I have to go on the offensive merely to get my rights and mount a campaign? For instance, I could try emailing this story to the news desks/reviewers at all the major computer magazines but all this just to get my contract with Bitdefender fulfilled?