I’ve been having a fight with McAfee. Or rather, I’ve been having a fight and they’ve been waging a war of attrition. Starting with an automatic renewal that I didn’t want containing two e-mail addresses to contact customer services on, both of which bring back an autoresponder telling me to go to the website for help. Go to the website and work through their pseudo-AI FAQ system, to the point where it says “Did this help? If not contact customer services through live chat”. Then trying live chat and waiting for 1 minute to talk to ‘David Trevett’ who starts with “Can you please tell me the versions of the McAfee products you are using, and also give a brief description of your issue?”. That sounds very scripted, and then he doesn’t understand my reply: “My anti-virus subscription has been renewed and I want a refund”. So, I’ve been put on hold for one minute to talk to a chat-bot. Wonderful. Trying again does bring up a “You know you can talk to us on 020 7949 0107” after about 3 minutes of non-responsive chat-bot data-mining spent looking for matches to my “give me my money back” question in its database.
So I call the number, get put through to a person (I think), and actually get my refund, and also make sure they don’t ever renew anything else ‘to enhance my service level’. Then, trying to be helpful, I tell the guy on the phone that the e-mail addresses they’ve put on their receipt don’t work. “But I’ve typed your e-mail address into my screen and it’s brought back your details so it must work.” “No, not my e-mail address. My e-mail address works, yours doesn’t.” “Ours doesn’t work?” “billings@ and subscriptions@ both send back an autoresponder saying the mailboxes are inactive. You should probably take those off of your receipts.” I’m feeling helpful, despite the experience so far, but he’s having none of it: “Okay, I’ll send you an e-mail with our customer support addresses so if you need to get in touch with us you can use those. How will that do?” “Yeah, that’ll do….”
I’m still undecided as to whether I just spoke to a chat-bot with a scottish accent or not.
I have been trying to get a refund for nearly 7 weeks.I find Mcafee customer Service to be pathetic and toothless when asked to speak to a manager they say we have to speak to the USA as tyo why you haven’t received a refund.TALK ABOUT PATHETIC
I have just spent the best part of two days trying to get a refund from Mcafee. The girl in Phillipines call centre did say that my credit card payment would be refunded. Sure when the next monthly visa bill came through, I was credited with the full amount.On the very same bill I was debited with exactly the same amount. Thus nullifying the first transaction. I have now decided to cut my losses (No more calls at £1 per minute to someone trained in the art of obfuscation.) OK so they have robbed me of £49.99. but if I pursue the matter (it`s like chasing your own tail) I will probably have a nervous breakdown or heart attack.One thing for sure they will get no more business from me. A lot of my friends are getting well informed on the subject.
I’ve spent part of yesterday and most of today trying to get the £39.99 fraudulently deducted from my account. And if I don’t hear from them and get a very prompt refund, their name will be mud all over the Internet. I mean large major blogs such Democratic Underground and the Guardian. We are not talking about sharp practice her but a felony as shameless as it is overt.What’s more, I’ll be sent a fraud report by my bank to fill in and return. Don’t give up, arthur, get a fraud report from your bank. If you are in the same situation as me, i.e. having allowed your annual registration to lapse before they introduced this untimely tacit renewal scam.
I too have been subject to a McAfee unauthorised “pre approved payment”of £59.95 for antivirus updates for a further 12 months. The deduction was taken via Paypal who were very unhelpful responding that they would investigate if I rang them on a premium line number at £1.50 per minute. After several attempts to find a McAfee telephone number to complain I eventually got through to someone at Slough (0171 217500) and I have been promised a refund. My current view regarding McAfee is that it is they make it mightily easy to purchase their products but extremely difficult to complain about them.