Check out this "hate McAfee" page:

Opinions on MCAFEE

Setting the bar L-O-W

The web is well-populated with accounts of McAfee customers who are dissatisfied. During my brief sojourn on McAfee's support community, I was confronted by a zealot whose rationale was that no other software company offered any better customer service/tech support. I dunno, "Aw, Maw, all the other kids are doing it" never worked for me.

When cars, cribs, toys, and even food products are found to be deficient, recalls are issued. But as long as there are people who say N***** is even worse, McAfee doesn't see any reason to improve or stand behind its product and its paying customers.

What would happen if McAfee listened to its customers?

McAfee HIDES from its bread-and-butter customers

You have to be good at something, and McAfee excels at shielding itself from its customers. Its website provides one (count 'em, one) customer service phone number for home and home office users - (866) 622-3911 - which I'm pretty sure is answered somewhere in India. Calling that number gets you no free tech support unless you purchased McAfee within the last 30 days. McAfee provides no email addresses for contact, and one general corporate mailing address: 3965 Freedom Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054. Found this general phone number from yellowpages.com: (408) 988-3832


I was able to find out from McAfee's Management Team webpage that Barry McPherson is the Executive Vice President, Worldwide Technical Support & Customer Service, and that he lives somewhere in the Dallas, TX area. Searching for McAfee in Dallas, I found this general contact info: 5944 Luther Ln., Ste. 1007, Dallas, TX 75225, (800)338-8754, (214)361-8086, (214)361-1882 fax. I'll keep looking. Post a comment below if you have any contact info for McAfee customer support personnel.

What was I waiting for?

In retrospect, I have to wonder why I put up with McAfee so long. It's like the stiff knee you just live with. I really do hate spending time dealing with the computer. Now that they've pushed me past the brink of enduring their drawbacks, I'm looking forward to the day my subscription expires like a child waiting for Christmas morning.

Only 250 days left!

Click here for current countdown timer. I like this! :)

McAfee's Censorship

I created this blog because I wasn't allowed to express my opinion on McAfee's Community Forum. There is a section titled "Consumer Service and Support Feedback." Gee whiz, seemed to me like a good place to tell McAfee that I'd spent three days getting run arounds and platitudes, and that their service and support sucks. Well, wasn't any time at all before a big bully moderator charged in, personally attacking both me and the one other member who had expressed a similar opinion. "The customer is always wrong!" Jerk was sending me "I'll fix you" personal messages. I had to change my email address to a non-existent one to stop his abusive messages. Not submitting to his control ("Go ahead, make my day. Reply to this and your banned."), it didn't take but a few more exchanges before he'd abused his power and I'd been banned from the forum forever. Oh, woe is me, how will I survive? Well, I've always believed that you don't have any business complaining about someone behind their backs if you haven't first made a sincere effort to talk to someone who can do something about it. I made a sincere effort. No one was listening. Criticism of McAfee is not tolerated.

Suggestions for McAfee alternatives

Please post your comments on anti-virus protection products you'd recommend. I won't be renewing my McAfee subscription.

"mcafee sucks" Google search results

Google search results for the phrase "McAfee Sucks".

A fairly popular phrase - people have said it 11,400 times on the web.

Comments on McAfee Service

Post your comments on McAfee service here.

After a year and a half of putting up with McAfee's shortcomings, I was finally aggravated enough to tackle a sojourn into McAfee suportland. Options are very limited. First and foremost, McAfee wants you to somehow find the information in their "extensive knowledgebase." Hey, makes sense to me. I, an ordinary computer user, should be able to find the information and fix the problems McAfee's software developers didn't. Having failed at that, I was ready to ask for help. In their zeal to protect their customers from their flesh-and-blood techies, McAfee requires that you first download and run their "Virtual Technician". Only when that fails to solve the problem are you allowed to move up to the next level, "chatting with a technician". Now, their photo depicts a technician whose ancestry appears to be English-speaking wearing a headset, which one would assume he would use to vocally speak to you. Not so. Again, you have to do some downloading in order to have a written "chat session" with Ajith, whom I'm pretty sure doesn't live right down the block. In my case, all the technician was interested in was getting through with the chat session. Being of any useful help wasn't on his agenda. He referred me to more things which I tried after the chat session which also didn't do me any good, and to the community forum, where I could seek advice from other McAfee users, not anyone who worked for McAfee. The only other alternative is to pay to actually speak with a techie. So, after four days of aggravation, I've still got notfullyprotecteddom pop-ups popping up, and I didn't even broach the subject of McAfee as a memory hog.

Comments on McAfee Products

Post your comments on McAfee products here.

Okay, the product problem which precipitated my sojourn into McAfee supportland was that, for the entire year and a half I've had the product, pretty much every day, sometimes two, three, and four times a day, I'd get a pop-up telling me that my computer was not fully protected. If I didn't happen to be sitting in front of the computer ready to pounce on any pop-ups, the state of notfullyprotecteddom had been in effect for some time. Well, HELLO!?!?! Isn't it the purpose of an anti-virus protection program to fully protect my computer? Besides that, it always takes some time to fix the problem, which lasts until the next time it's unfixed again. I'm sorry, but anti-virus software which sells at a premium price should work better than that. You don't even want to get me started on how my computer is almost completely frozen every time McAfee is updating itself.

Welcome!

This blog is a place to express your frustrations and dissatisfactions with McAfee software and/or their customer/technical support/service (and I use the term loosely). Unfortunately, I found this can't be done on their own community forums. I'll be back to talk about my personal experience later. In the meantime, to get things going, let me suggest the following motto to McAfee:

In an industry where poor customer service is standard, McAfee might not be the worst.

They so proud! :)

McAfee doesn't practice free speech, but I do!