Aghast at Avast's iYogi Support

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/aghast-at-avasts-iyogi-support/#more-14120

 

Thanks for pointing it out. I've commented on the link you provided and i hope we'll have some productive discussion about it with avast! staff as well.

 

How can an in the past reputable vendor like Avast go to bed with a scam service like that? Hopefully they will terminate that contract pronto, yes managing support requests is a challenge for vendors, but not worth loosing credibility over with dubious indian services trying to sell you useless services instead of just giving the support requested.

 

Reading that and some of the posts relating to iyogi on other forums including Avasts amaze me.
However I once contacted HP support and ever since then I have dealt with all problems myself.
A lot of support seems to know next to nothing and there's always an underlying fear that they are trying to sell you something.
I have no faith in any on line support.

 

just check the avast forum, the "iYogi" problem is very old and avast staff knows about it. but, despite many customer complains, nothing has been done. there is an avast official who posted on the forum, but it was just marketing, to give the users a warm fuzzy feeling that their needs are being addressed. avast still goes to bed with iYogi. and that says a lot about a company.

 

avast! has been getting more than it's share of bad publicity recently....not a good thing. I hope they get things resolved soon or their customer base will suffer I imagine.

 

John,

Just attribute the interesting changes to year two of the new CEO's reign. Marketing, it seems, has become the greater priority in the Avast shop IMO.

 

Interesting....I encountered similar situation with PerfectDisk a couple years back...marketing competition and adding "bells and whistles" seemed more important than customer problems with the product. I guess it happens often, but I don't like to see a vendor go that route, especially one I used and liked (and paid for).

 

If we are honest avast! didn't really have any marketing 3 years ago. And even today it's in very minor position compared to others where more than half of the staff work in marketing. Where with avast!, most of the staff are programmers and virus analysts.

 

Avast is ending their relationship with this company.
https://blog.avast.com/2012/03/15/iyogi-support-service-removed/

 

Kudos to him/them for taking the correct step and doing it fast IMO.

 

Ouch... This is my humble analysis...

We had initial reports of this behavior a few weeks ago and met with iYogi’s senior executives to ensure the behavior was being corrected.

OK...

Thus, we were shocked to find out about Mr. Krebs’ experience. As a consequence, we have removed the iYogi support service from our website and shortly it will be removed from our products.

Good call...

We believe that this type of service, when performed in a correct manner, provides immense value to users. As such, over the next weeks, we will work with iYogi to determine whether the service can be re-launched.

Emphasis by me.

Am I the only one to see this is a trust issue with these iYogy folks? Is there any trust left to give them? Phone support? Yes. But, maybe a different and trustworthy company? If there's any such thing...

 

I'm feeling really warm and fuzzy after reading this part of the post by the iYogi President: "Like the makers of Tylenol we think that we can improve even more. "

 

AWESOME they parted ways iyogi SUCKS. so many of my customers have dealt with them and HATED the whole experience and some were scammed and are disputing charges etc. i was one of the very first ones on the avast forum way back when they started this who said to not go this way as having dealt with iyogi in the past i knew what they were like.

thank you avast for making the RIGHT decision!!!

 

What is the "right" decision? I thought Larry Gordon was frank about iYogi's freemium remote tech support service ("...we want as many people to try our service as possible, and then we use that service-experience to upsell our subscription-based all-you-can-eat tech support..."). I noticed that Vince Steckler of avast said "We believe that this type of service, when performed in a correct manner, provides immense value to users. As such, over the next weeks, we will work with iYogi to determine whether the service can be re-launched.". I don't think either of these people, or companies, has had a change of heart. Which leaves at least several important questions on the table:

1) Is freemium remote tech support appropriate for security software? If it is from a third-party?
2) Should remote access features be built into the security software itself? Installed by default? Enabled by default?
3) Is it appropriate for a freemium tech support company to push its own or partner software onto the user's system (iYogi Support Dock for example)

From both a personal and bigger picture point of view, I think the answer to these questions is NO. Which is not to say there aren't some exceptions I'd be OK with and is not to say I don't appreciate that remote tech support from strangers can in some cases be valuable. I don't think the various companies which are pushing such things are looking out for the best interest of their user's. I think it is largely a classic case of companies promoting what benefits those companies (another feature to hype, additional direct revenue or kickbacks from partners, broader capture of the user, etc).

Show me an AV company saying "we understand you might benefit from such things and we could provide them... but our job is to focus on our software and make it as robust and resilient as possible... we don't think it is our place to bait you into using a partner's solution" and then I'll be impressed.

 

Showing user some phony errors and playing terror tricks on them is not appropriate on any level, not even on any kind of free service that would as result boost sales of paid version of the service. Especially since they are not isolated cases but they operate on exact steps that are the same between many if not all users.

 

IMO Avast needs to take a hard look at their Indian base of operations. I've even encountered cases where the Indian distributor sells the free version of avast.

 

TheWindBringeth,

After many years (I go back to Avast 4.7) using this software, I (for one) have decided to move on. I may revisit Avast down the road, but not now.

 

I too have moved on (goodbye Avast)......

 

Well, it looks like the toll free iYogi number has been removed from Avast's support page:

http://www.avast.com/en-us/support

However, I plan to stay with Avast free antivirus.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2032263&postcount=14

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2032265&postcount=15