No upgrades?

I can't understand this. My subscription recently expired a month or two ago. I needed to renew and upgrade. I tried. I got the following:

Your username and email combination was not found.
Please contact Customer Support for further assistance.

So I go to the recover my information page

http://www.eset.com/support/lost_license.php

and my information is sent to me at the same email address as I put in including user name. Anyone else have this problem? I wasn't sure whether I wanted to renew NOD32 because it failed me a few times in discovering a few Trojans that nailed me. I've been trying some others with very good success and thought perhaps I'd look at NOD32 again, perhaps for a year, and then I got this.

 

Hmmm... no answers here. It looks like my other alternative is Avira. I've sent 3 messages to ESET and not one of them has been responded to or somehow they are the only domain not getting through to my email address. The first time I sent them a message with regard to NOD32 completely missing several Trojans that wracked my system. No response. Now I've got an upgrade option taken away where my customer account is clearly IN the ESET database but I've got to call ESET now just for the privilege of upgrading. Thanks... but perhaps this is a sign to move.

 

Hi Slinky, your best bet at this point is to contact sales. I believe that you're allowed to renew 30 days before license expiration and up to 30 days after. That may be the root of the problem. I'd call the sales number at the top of this page: http://www.eset.com/purchase/index.php

 

Yes, I'm sure that's it. If that's the case and I need to purchase a new license at new license prices... well... then I've got my answer and time to move onwards. Thanks again.

 

I've had enough of ESET and my experience on the phone led me to believe that the best products and customer experience can be found elsewhere.

It began with the totally corny, self-loving music on hold (ESET! ESET! ESET!) that I had to listen to for 23 minutes since I couldn't get a simple answer in email as to my question. The reason for this was the "upsell" that they do on the phone.

I was an eset customer for several years. My license expired for roughly 90 days since I was evaluating some other software. On the phone they told me I could get a 1 year deal or save money with the 2 year subscription. I looked at the web site and asked "isn't that more money than elsewhere?" He replied that other sites may provide the software at a discount. I asked "I meant the price you're giving me costs more money than for the renewal price on your web site!" He responded by telling me that the company considers software that expired for 60 days to be not valid for renewals. Ohhhh... so THAT is what you meant by renewing my software after confirming that I am a long time customer. He also informed me that even he was locked out of the system in some fashion because once 60 days have passed it's as if you didn't buy the software -- except for keeping your information, likely for marketing purposes.

I told him that I'd never heard of such a short policy for any software I've ever owned. He asked "so do you want a 2 year license?" I thanked him and said I'll have to think about it since now I'm considered a non-customer. To heck with ESET.

Not that I'm impressed with Avira and their sneaky tactics. I decided to look up what the "required donation to the Auerbach foundation" was with all their packages. It's a foundation created by the founder of Avira. Now isn't that special. If you've ever worked at a non-profit you know exactly how that works. I didn't bother to look at the financials of this foundation to see if whose salaries appeared and what "honoraria" existed and was sufficiently turned off by the closeness to Avira. It's still cheaper than all of the ESET packages.

So as of right now it looks like I may actually go with Kaspersky after all these years. It's hard to believe that ESET lets customers walk away so easily. Best of luck to you guys. I liked you when you were a smaller company and had perspective.

 

Looks like even stomaching Avira is a better solution than NOD32. It amazes me that ESET is absolutely hell bent on making sure its 60 day lapse policy no longer makes you a supporting customer - even after years of subscriptions. You're still treated as though you've never bought from them. I've never seen anything like it.

So I'm off to Avira and, so far, the free month with Avira is great. It's very quick, detection seems very good and definitely faster than it was with NOD32.