The trouble with Norton

So I have my Norton Antivirus set up for automatic renewal only because they make it near impossible not to. I am actually a McAfee fan as McAfee has pulled my butt out of several fires over the years so it is hard not to have some love for them. Norton made the world's best disk utilities and I didn't really love the idea of them becoming a security company. Symantec has bought a lot of good companies only to cast them aside after sucking what good marrow there was and then corrupted it beyond use or recognition. But hey, that is a post for another day. Back to the original story already in progress...

So my automatic renewal took place in June. I had installed Windows 7 (180 day trial) on to the PC over on top of Vista so the machine was actually useful for something. Norton continued to work okay. However the trial version of Win7 began to flake out in June as directed by Microsoft. So being a college student I took advantage of the Ultimate Steal and bought Windows 7 Professional for the computer. However, you can't just upgrade Windows 7 over the trial, you have to reinstall. So I moved everything from the C partition to the D partition and installed Windows 7 fresh on the C partition. This worked and I got to keep my files. However, Norton was gone and I could not find my install disk. So I tried to log on to the Norton site and it told me my password was wrong. So I told it to reset my password and send me an email. However, the email never arrives. I try this a couple of times and I give up a bit as I don't have time to keep beating my head against the wall. So today I call Norton and ask for assistance. The gentleman on the phone wanted me to allow them to do Expert installation. I told him, no, I just want to download Norton as I have renewed my subscription and I can tell him all my info to prove it including my renewal number. He tells me no, the only way I can get Norton is to get expert installation as he wants to ensure all my software works correctly on my computer. Then he tells me this service costs money that I will have to pay. This set me off. I am usually a patient person, but this set me off. Look, my subscription renewal says I have 60 days to cancel and I think I will. I happen to have a copy of McAfee that will work just fine and he can just refund me my money. Finally, he says he will transfer me to another group and they will allow me to just download Norton. So I am put on hold to hold music for twenty minutes then I hear a phone ringing then I get a busy signal and a disconnect. Grrrrrrrr!