Ewido anti-malware plus lifetime

Some are trustworthy (right? there must be some...), but you can't tell which ones. I remember the days when everyone would scream at me when I called BS on other vendors...vendors who have since screwed their customers over. Sometimes it was pure vaporware, other times never-ending beta status or abandoned products that licenses were still being sold for. Or as in this case, "lifetime licenses" that...aren't.

I know exactly how you feel. I'm close to switching to avast! Home Edition myself.

 

We are still waiting to here more information from Ewido Representatives not from AVG!

TH

 

Nameless-there may be trustworth developers, but they probably will be aborbed by untrustworthy companies. After my SpySweeper debacle, I realized that the only programs I really had trouble with were the paid. Usually due to paids releasing a program before thoroughly tested.

As long as I am ranting, I am questioning whether this should be referred to as the "Official Ewido Support Forum"

1. According to AVG, Ewido and the Ewido product no longer exist in any form.

2. I accept that the people of the former Ewido knew nothing of this, but that just means that they are not the "official" voice of this product.

Doubly bad since representatives of the former Ewido made statements on this board that the product ewido anti-malware would continue in development and that lifetime licenses would be honored and these statements were accepted as "official" and are false.

3. If the people of the former Ewido are not the official voice of this product, then to my knowledge no official voice of this product has been at this board. Noticibly absent for this discussion, that directly involved them.

 

Hello,

I'm not a paid Ewido customer from before, but as for Windows software in general - it's been going towards a subscription-based model for years.
Although I can sense (and agree with) the frustration in users seeing their lifetime licenses becoming no longer valid, there are the overwhelming instances of Windows software going for $30/year and up, and for paid software, it's becoming the norm.
Companies get eaten - that's nothing new since around '98 or so, and now that Vista is out, the 3rd party developers have to jump through hoops to make their software compatible, and that aspect alone is eating up more development time now than was previously foreseen in the pre-Vista days. Time = money. I'm not defending AVG here. If a user got a year out of the software that they paid $30 for these days, it's normal.
The hidden costs of Windows computing.
There are alternatives, and it's instances like this that cause people, either willingly or otherwise to take a look at those alternatives, with OSS being a prime example. That's one of the reasons I went to Linux - no hidden costs, no spyware apps; in fact - NO costs. Plus the code is inherently more secure by design. It's why banks run *nix servers.

 

As did I, same expiry date.

I'm more or less neutral on this outcome, just confirming gerardwil's information.

Blue

 

Same here and the same Date! But I will still want to here from Ewido Representatives not from AVG!

TH

 

I got the email as well. As far as Im concerned, I own a lifetime license for AVG AS - they have sent me a key for AVG AM which lasts for two years - which I wont be using as I use F-Secure AV which is better then their AV.

 

I have emailed their sales dept and told them:

1) I already have a lifetime license to AVG AS
2) I do not want AVG AM
3) I will take legal action against them if they fail to honour thieir obligations on my AVG AS licence for the lifetime of the product.

I suggest everyone sends them a similar email.

They seem to think they can get away with this. They cant and I will take action against them. Dont care how much it costs, how long it takes. Im sick of living my life in a decent and honset way and being scammed by filthy *******, who make their living by lying, stealing, not delivering on services agreed etc etc.

All scamsoft need to do is say they will honour the agreement and there will be no problem. If they are going to tell me they are going to break the agreement there is going to be trouble.

 

But hold on... Peter said he was going to look into it...

..Remember, the Ewido guys didn't see this coming either.... Peter was surprisingly upfront about the situation.

Let's give Peter and others the chance to see if they can get this resolved.

The way we all feel about this could actually be pretty good if the Ewido guys come through and get Grisoft onboard to honor the original commitment.

I would then view this as an unfortunate corporate hiccup worked out by some of the good guys in the software business.

It’s been less than a week since Peter.Ewido said he would try and get this resolved…so lets give it a little more time. I think that’s only fair. Corporate staffs are like government staffs…they are not the most responsive nor the most flexible entities around…

And seriously, I would think the Grisoft mid-level corporate weenies would see the wisdom in continuing the lifetime product and forgoing the corporate ill-will generated from dishonoring a commitment -- and using the unlimited memberships as a means to try and cross sell other products based on the good performance of AVG-AS.

The ill-thought out method of yanking a commitment and then trying to strong-arm additional sales based on the poorly conceived email was just kind of a bonehead business move...


.

 

Last week I sent in my 3 AVG AntiSpyware Lifetime Licenses
and today I received a license for 3 computers to continue running AVG AntiSpyware.
They are good till January 1 ,2010
and I do like this product and will keep it
-----------------------------

So the end is coming , I see it now !
The tip was when I read -former ewido forum employees
were not informed

It was nice knowing all you former Ewido forum members
and the ewido forum employees
So if you want to meet in the next life
I always display my visited
forums in my signature

 

Well we are still waiting guys! In other words Bump! We would like to hear some good news!

TH

 

Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, in my honest personal experience I have found Grisoft's sales department to be horribly slow. Even the slightest question like asking about student discounts took me 5 days to get an answer (Fine, I did get an email saying representatives were unable to respond due to high volume of messages, but still...). My second sales enquiry about AVG's Internet Security Home Edition for 3 PCs was never answered at all....Their support is very good though.

So you guys may have to wait quite a long time before an answer comes by.

 

That's ridiculous. An Ewido team member is the one trying to resolve this. He's not regular customer dealing with sales. He's the prime developers for a major part of the product and should have direct access to the decision makers.

 

But he/they are not decission makers anymore.
They could have ofcourse an intern discussion about this, but Grisoft makes the decissions.

Gerard

 

IMHO

Its over

We are lucky they have not shut us down in this forum
and asked us to go to AVG support for customers using the paid version

 

And because of this, I expect a delay, but not to the same extent as what I experienced as a customer.

I don't know if its over though, because it is quite clear Grisoft is not discontinuing the product AVG Anti-Spyware.

 

Strange fact now is that I have yet two license keys.
One AVGAS unlimited (whatever that means) and one for another Grisoft product that will expire January 1st 2010.

Gerard

 

My email to Grisoft: if and when i receive a reply i will post here;

Hello Jarmilla:

I purchased Ewido several years ago partly because of the promise of a lifetime license. I am aware that Ewido has since been acquired by Grisoft. I question how you can call giving me a product i already have an "upgrade" i also question how the promise made by your representative in Wilders Security Forum that the lifetime licenses would be honored has transmuted into 2 years and half price after that ?

If this is an example of Grisofts business ethics i find that i must question your ethics in program integrity. I will accept your offer of the AVG Anti-Spyware, though how long it will remain on my computers is an open question. I can assure you that i will not be recommending your products to anyone at any future time


[edit - As you should know - posting of the verbatim contents of private email is prohibited unless explicit permission to do so is provided by the other party - Blue]

 

I must be talking a different language. I did NOT say they are the decision makers. But they should have access to higher levels of corporate then regular users.

But, if the Ewido team pull is so little that they can't get a timely reply, then I'm also wondering what is the use of this forum. In the future, they could be making commitments that we would act upon which could then be overridden by corporate.

I think its ridiculous to go through the trouble of acquiring a new license, replacing the unlimited licence with a limited one. The current screen has no expiration date and states the license is unlimited. The new screen will have an expiration date and no longer say unlimited.

Talk about moving backwards. Some improvement.

 

OK, you are right

Gerard

 

Bump.

Uugghhh. I hope this is not the case.

..sigh... All true...



.

 

I sent two emails to AVG with links to this thread this past week and still no reply but they where fast to send me a new limited key!

But I like this Quote below! Very true.

Cheers,

TH

 

OK, I received an email reply from Grisoft to my initial objection to being strong-armed to buy software for which I already had an "unlimited license.”

Noting the Wilder's prohibition on publishing content of emails -- I'll post a few of the 'highlights' of the email.

1. We all know that Ewido was acquired by Grisoft.
2. We all transitioned and now use AVG Anti-Spyware.
3. The “license condition” stated right on the GUI of the AVG-AS product states “unlimited updates.”
4. A Grisoft representative in these forums assured us we had “unlimited updates” – on the AVG-AS product.

So Grisoft representative, thank you for ignoring what I stated in my email, and thank you for ignoring what Grisoft specifically stated via the product and via a representative of the company.

Cross-selling is always a good technique. But Grisoft is missing a key element of Cross-selling theory. You have to make a customer happy with the product they have before they will buy additional products from you. Recent events don't give many the desire to buy anything from Grisoft. Both of these products you want us to buy include anti-virus, so we’d have to be pretty happy with AVG to replace our current AV.

I’d guess the mere existence of ‘unlimited update’ memberships successfully cross-sold more products than this attempt to retract a promise, change the terms retroactively, and then treat us like children and tell us that you are actually doing us a favor.

Oh Wow!! No additional cost! Thanks for giving us for FREE a product… but wait, we already owned it…

Grisoft’s use of the terms “loyal” and “FREE” is cynical, ugly, and dishonest.

As far as I’m concerned, Grisoft can take a big ‘ole pole and shove it all the way up its contemptible, deceitful, and shameless corporate ass.

No offense at all to the Ewido guys from this forum who I believe tried unsuccessfully to intercede on our behalf -- but I call on Wilder’s once again to remove Ewido from these forums. There should be standards for inclusion in Wilder’s.

.

 

Hi, folks: I think the long-waited email reply from someone(heartless and faceless, shame) in the hideout of Grisoft has finally help a lot of lifetime license holders(Ewido) to move forward and look further much easily. An ugly and shameful page has now officially been turned over. Dark and heavy clouds no longer hang over our heads. Be smarter next time around, folks. After this episode, I just wonder how much weight will the words of Ewido guys carry. I deeply feel sorry for them, hoping they can find a new home soon.

 

Hi folks I just got the same email as Frank did so I think we are SOL to convice them otherwise so we will see after the limited (unlimited) license expires to make a change!

Funny how the Ewido Staff has not responded

Cheers,

TH