Being a helpful netizen costs too much sometimes.
I found a very tiny bug in McAfee’s latest version. In Eudora, instead of ‘McAfee Anti-Spam’ in the menu bar, the latest update has caused those words to read ‘%COMPANY_NAME_NEUTRAL%Anti-Spam’.
To be a helpful netizen filing a bug report (and I am used to that taking two minutes all up), here’s the process I followed today.
11.30 a.m. GMT: Search for McAfee Support in Duck Duck Go.
11.30: Arrive at http://www.mcafee.com/us/support.aspx.
11.33: Unable to log in, despite being a McAfee customer.
11.35: Unable to create a new account, because it has asked for a ‘Grant number’. All the guys called Grant that I know are asleep.
11.35: Go to the ‘Contact Us’ page to give feedback and find a link to service.mcafee.com. I click on that.
11.36: I select the affected product. McAfee offers me the choice of ‘Free Technical Support’.
11.36: McAfee insists I download and run the McAfee Virtual Technician. I do.
11.48: McAfee Virtual Technician has completed its scan and claims all is well.
11.49: I am taken to the FAQs where I have to search for my error.
11.50: After finding that none of them fit the bill, McAfee presents two options: ‘Click the Continue button to go to Chat, or Finish to close this session.’ I select the former, as the matter is not concluded.
11.52: McAfee prompts me to enter my country and language.
11.52: McAfee gives me the options of chatting or emailing. I chose the former as it says the wait time is 2 minutes, versus 24 hours, plus the 11.50 a.m. prompt said the option was to ‘Chat’. I enter the bug report into the comment box, and expected a tech would get back to me within two minutes to confirm receipt.
Below is the transcript of the next 20 minutes, with one edit made for privacy reasons.
GoToAssist (11:54:29):
Thank you for contacting McAfee Consumer Support. An agent will be with you shortly.Customer (11:55:11):
Hi there: I don’t actually need to be walked through anything. I wanted to make sure you got the bug report I just filed. The only button available after writing my report was ‘Chat’, so I pressed it.Sangeetha (11:55:45):
Jack, thank you for contacting McAfee Online Support Center. My name is Sangeetha.Customer (11:55:55):
Hello Sangeetha.Sangeetha (11:56:23):
Your Service Request Number for this chat session is 700641817.
Sangeetha (11:56:33):
Is this your first contact with McAfee Technical support in this week, including today?Customer (11:56:42):
Yes. I wonder if you received my bug report just now.Sangeetha (11:57:07):
McAfee will communicate with you through the email … please confirm if this email address is valid.Customer (11:57:16):
It is correct, thank you.Sangeetha (11:57:33):
Thank you for confirming.Customer (11:58:07):
Is there anything else you need from me to complete the report?Sangeetha (11:58:10):
As I understand, you have sent the bug report and it prompted to chat?Customer (11:58:25):
Yes, that is correct. I just want to make sure the report arrived there.Sangeetha (11:58:30):
Thank you for confirming.
Sangeetha (11:58:38):
I apologize for the inconvenience caused. I will be glad to assist you with this issue.
Sangeetha (11:59:02):
May I know when you got the bug report?Customer (11:59:19):
I sent it immediately before this chat session.
Customer (11:59:34):
I imagine that was 11.50 GMT.Sangeetha (11:59:50):
When did you get the bug report?Customer (12:00:06):
No, I didn’t get a bug report. I sent one.Sangeetha (12:00:29):
Why did you send the bug report?Customer (12:00:50):
To be helpful to McAfee so it could remedy it for its next update.Sangeetha (12:01:44):
Did it prompt you to send the bug report while updating McAfee?Customer (12:02:19):
No. I found a bug in McAfee. I then went to your website to tell your company about it. I simply want to make sure you received it.Sangeetha (12:02:45):
May I know if you are using the same computer to chat with me?Customer (12:02:50):
Yes, I am.Sangeetha (12:03:00):
Okay, I would like to obtain system information from your computer. Please accept my request and grant me access to this.Customer (12:03:12):
Sangeetha, I am not sure why you need to do this.Sangeetha (12:03:34):
I just to check your system information.Customer (12:04:00):
I think we have to stop there. I do not believe this is relevant to whether or not your company received a message from me.Sangeetha (12:05:52):
You might have sent it to McAfee engineering team.Customer (12:06:46):
I may have. I used your website and entered in the issue at: https://service.mcafee.com/UserInfo.aspx?lc=1033&sg=TS&pt=1&st=CHAT
Customer (12:07:11):
It is the only place where I could enter anything to report a bug, after the FAQs revealed nothing.Sangeetha (12:08:53):
I would request you to send the report through email instead of chat by logging in to the same website.Customer (12:09:31):
What is the correct email address?Sangeetha (12:12:01):
There is no particular email address. likewise you did the chat.Customer (12:12:14):
OK, how do I send this email to you in that case?
Customer (12:12:25):
Is there a web link that takes me to an email form?Sangeetha (12:12:52):
Instead of chat you can select email option.Customer (12:14:43):
I will look for it now.Sangeetha (12:14:59):
Is there anything else that I can do to assist you with your McAfee products today?
Sangeetha (12:15:24):
You can contact us back if any issues further.Customer (12:16:00):
Thank you, Sangeetha. Have a nice afternoon.Sangeetha (12:16:32):
You may receive an email survey asking for your comments on this chat experience. Your feedback will help to ensure that I’m providing the highest quality service possible.
Sangeetha (12:16:38):
For all of your Customer Service and Technical Support needs, please visit http://service.mcafee.com Thank you for visiting McAfee Online Support Center. Have a great time.
Sangeetha (12:16:44):
Thank you for choosing McAfee. We appreciate your business and your feedback. Have a great time.
Sangeetha (12:16:53):
Good bye…..Customer (12:17:19):
Good bye.
I found the email link, and maybe I should have opted for that to begin with. I can’t fault Sangeetha for being polite and helpful—it has come a long way since the beginning of the century, when McAfee had pretty rude forum techs—but surely it can’t be too hard to give us an easy-to-find bug report form that would take a minute to fill in? All this nonsense with grant numbers, downloads and Virtual Technicians (which, I might add, does work quite well when there is a set-up cock-up) makes little sense, especially as all software has bugs and there should be room to report them.
I want my 50 minutes back.
PS.: The email response has come from Nagaraj. Sounds he has exactly the same script as his colleague. Here we go again. What is the bloody point?—JY
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Always frustrating when companies give customer/tech support to some wage slave (especially a very outsourced one with a intermediary command of English) that is hopelessly bound to a script.
I generally can’t stand scripts, and even when I know the employee is a native and speaking perfect English, those canned scripts really drive me up the wall. I try to play along as best I can instead of shouting at them to talk to me like an everyday human being.
The first time I saw this in a big way was at Yahoo!, which had deleted all my members and messages from one of my Yahoo! Groups without explanation. I never got past the first-level drone whose native tongue was probably English, and whose greatest expertise was copying and pasting from the FAQs. (The group’s still there: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Lucire/.) I tried to keep patient, but it never got me anywhere.