How to deal with Customers Getting Reinfected

[Amanda]

SO had a customer today that I yelled at and told them to FUK OFF..Heres the story

They brought me there computer in 1 week ago for a virus removal. I charge a additonal $25 to start working on there computer right away along with the $60 Labor fee. I fixed there computer that day also skipping the 6 other computers ahead of them. Computer has been working great for the week she has had it but the other day it got another virus. Now I offered to put on Norton AV the first time she was at the shop she declined saying she would put on a free AV =).. Well she was EXTREMELY upset that she had to pay again 1 week later that she got reinfected. ON all my paper work I have disclaimers about how I am NOT responsible for reinfection that I only put a 24 Hour Warranty on Virus Removals. Well she stormed out after paying me and said she was never coming back. Well I already lost her as a customer so I went outside and told her the next time she comes back to me I will be charging her Double for her attitude and I still will be cheaper then all the techs in my town (they all charge by the hour minimum of 2 hours)..Anyways how do you guys deal with telling people about getting reinfected?

I'm sure people more knowledgeable than I addressed the tech aspect of this post... I'm still stuck on how you treated a paying customer. Seriously? You cussed a customer out because they were upset? Big mistake... HUGE. If a customer is upset and walks away... let them. You don't get to have the last word. What you did was insanely unprofessional and has cost you at least a few hundred dollars.

/rant

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Cursing at customers...this is the behavior that will sweep the nation since garbage TV shows like "Hard Core Pawn" have swept the nation. A TV show where every other word is bleeped out because it's a 4 letter word starting with the letter "f". And people just yell and scream at each other trying to out-intimidate each other.

 

[Bubbajoe]

With over 2000 cases doing remote support for Geeksquad, I've done over 400 virus removals. Pretty easy to see which customer will be back for another virus removal. They are the ones with Crawler toolbars, MWS, shopathome, porn links in history, etc.

By far, most of the infected customers have some form of AV installed. And the most common AV with an infection that I see is Kaspersky. Does that mean Kaspersky is bad? Heck no. It's all a numbers game. BestBuy pushes/pushed Kaspersky (now they also have a free yr of Webroot deal).

People who come on here and say "I've seen more infection with X antivirus than any other antivirus" and use that to claim said AV is no good only expose their cluelessness.. Please...

But I've seen infections on every AV vendor. Most of the customers that I've seen with infections would have been infected no matter what AV product was installed.

And I get this from a lot of customers:

"Well I have X antivirus installed and got infected, I'm never going to use them again. Please get that trash off my computer and install Y antivirus for me." Then, two weeks later they'll be back with another infection...sigh...

AV reviews? Are they reliable? I tend to believe so. If you go off of the two major independent labs (AV Comparatives and AV-TEST), the same 3 are always at the top: Norton, BitDefender and Kaspersky. I have no problem recommending any of them to my customers.

 

[ComputerPro]

the same 3 are always at the top: Norton, BitDefender and Kaspersky. I have no problem recommending any of them to my customers.

That's exactly what worries me about the av testing sites. If Norton is on top, then they are testing basic things like amount of caught viruses etc. But ignoring other real world things like how crappy and slow it makes your system run.
Same with Webroot lol. Good lord, the fact that the tray icon still says loading 5 minutes after Windows starts should tell you something lol.
For the life of me I just can't see how an experienced tech could recommend something like Norton. Each to their own of course, its just hard for my brain to wrap around that.

 

[ElementalWindX]

Cursing at customers...this is the behavior that will sweep the nation since garbage TV shows like "Hard Core Pawn" have swept the nation. A TV show where every other word is bleeped out because it's a 4 letter word starting with the letter "f". And people just yell and scream at each other trying to out-intimidate each other.

Yep. Can't wait till they put me on a reality show...it will be the most boring show ever. They will have to pay someone to make it entertaining.... oh wait they already do that for all the other shows...

 

[Bubbajoe]

That's exactly what worries me about the av testing sites. If Norton is on top, then they are testing basic things like amount of caught viruses etc. But ignoring other real world things like how crappy and slow it makes your system run.
Same with Webroot lol. Good lord, the fact that the tray icon still says loading 5 minutes after Windows starts should tell you something lol.
For the life of me I just can't see how an experienced tech could recommend something like Norton. Each to their own of course, its just hard for my brain to wrap around that.

Huh? Webroot has the smallest footprint of most any AV, if not the smallest. It takes no time at all to load.

And those who still claim that Norton slows down the system are clinging to years old data and have never in fact used a recent copy of Norton themselves. Norton resolved those issues years ago. You won't find any review within the last few years from any recognized source claiming that Norton is a resource hog...

 

[ElementalWindX]

That's exactly what worries me about the av testing sites. If Norton is on top, then they are testing basic things like amount of caught viruses etc. But ignoring other real world things like how crappy and slow it makes your system run.
Same with Webroot lol. Good lord, the fact that the tray icon still says loading 5 minutes after Windows starts should tell you something lol.
For the life of me I just can't see how an experienced tech could recommend something like Norton. Each to their own of course, its just hard for my brain to wrap around that.

I feel the same way.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

And those who still claim that Norton slows down the system are clinging to years old data and have never in fact used a recent copy of Norton themselves. Norton resolved those issues years ago. You won't find any review within the last few years from any recognized source claiming that Norton is a resource hog...

To be honest...you're correct there.
Several years ago Norton/Symantec did a complete, ground up overhaul of their antivirus engine. One of the result coming out of it...the antivirus engine took less than 8 megs of system RAM. Yup...less than 8 megs!

Doing a quick Google I found one independent test that verified 9.9 megs
http://www.antivirusware.com/testing/performance/

I know I can find some more links and tests...but memory consumption really doesn't bother me....most people have at least 4 gigs of RAM these days with hardware multi-core CPUs.

A few years ago nobody was a bigger Norton basher than I was...and I still don't like their products. But...."heavy" and "bloated" simply are no longer true. I have other reasons for hating their products...such as BloatupExec...I mean...Backup Exec..the one of the most needy troublesome backup softwares on the planet. And with the Corporate Edition antivirus...I can't begin to count the number of hours I've wasted when doing "push installs" across business networks results in spending tremendous time manually removing corrupted installs on workstations that blew up.

 

[Wezzel98765]

To be honest...you're correct there.
Several years ago Norton/Symantec did a complete, ground up overhaul of their antivirus engine. One of the result coming out of it...the antivirus engine took less than 8 megs of system RAM. Yup...less than 8 megs!

Doing a quick Google I found one independent test that verified 9

I know I can find some more links and tests...but memory consumption really doesn't bother me....most people have at least 4 gigs of RAM these days with hardware multi-core CPUs.

A few years ago nobody was a bigger Norton basher than I was...and I still don't like their products. But...."heavy" and "bloated" simply are no longer true. I have other reasons for hating their products...such as BloatupExec...I mean...Backup Exec..the one of the most needy troublesome backup softwares on the planet. And with the Corporate Edition antivirus...I can't begin to count the number of hours I've wasted when doing "push installs" across business networks results in spending tremendous time manually removing corrupted installs on workstations that blew up.

I disagree, numerous laptops with Norton installed that have come in to me for work over the last few months have been unusably slow, get rid of Norton, bam! Its like a new computer!!

The best anti virus is behind your very own eyes, contained within, is common sense!

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I disagree, numerous laptops with Norton installed that have come in to me for work over the last few months have been unusably slow, get rid of Norton, bam! Its like a new computer!!

The best anti virus is behind your very own eyes, contained within, is common sense!

Betcha those laptops are underpowered rigs. I'm not gonna defend norton..I won't sell it. But I've seen it enough on contemporary properly spec'd hardware to see that it's not the slug it was 10 years ago. If it is slow, probably leftover prior antivirus, or under powered ..2 or 1 gig of RAM, celeron or AMD powered laptops with 5,400rpm HDDs.

As to your own antivirus..."your own eyes"....have you tried remaining current on todays threats, and how they spread? Poisoned advertisements from subscriptions that normal everyday websites use, or hacked everyday websites like your local bank or local newspaper, or....forums...such as this one. I've seen very popular tech forums hacked into before. One day you may log on here...and BAM, your computer gets bit!

 

[Bubbajoe]

I disagree, numerous laptops with Norton installed that have come in to me for work over the last few months have been unusably slow, get rid of Norton, bam! Its like a new computer!!

The best anti virus is behind your very own eyes, contained within, is common sense!

Again, you made my point. Those bashing Norton aren't using it and haven't used it in years. Your "seat of the pants" analysis of other people's computers is far from a valid conclusion and for you to come in here and tell other techs that Norton sucks based soley on that...well, it's telling...

I would never make such a public statement based off of anecdotal, "seat of the pants" experimentation such as that...

 

[Bubbajoe]

To be honest...you're correct there.
Several years ago Norton/Symantec did a complete, ground up overhaul of their antivirus engine. One of the result coming out of it...the antivirus engine took less than 8 megs of system RAM. Yup...less than 8 megs!

Doing a quick Google I found one independent test that verified 9.9 megs
http://www.antivirusware.com/testing/performance/

Yeah, the AV is pretty tight. I run N360 and it takes up a bit more memory, but it's doing a lot more. At idle, it runs around 13-15 meg. Still very respectable. Hell, Dropbox takes up 18-20 meg idle...