Norton and the money trap.
Yesterday I had an issue with a video maker program not being able to download the video I made. After checking things out on my own for quite a while, I decided to check if my security software might have anything to do with the download issue.
I went to Norton's chat box and initiated contact. Then there was all the wait time for a chat person. The chat box kept saying the wait would only be a few minutes, but that wasn't the case. After 20-30 min. I logged out of the chat thinking that something might be wrong. I did a few things and then came back and tried again.
Within probably 10 min. this time, I was given to someone. After hearing my tale of woe about the video, he decided he needed to remote view my computer to see what could be the problem.
Quickly I was told that unauthorized IP addresses were logging into my computer and that was the problem. He was sure I had to fix this problem. The solution? Spend $200 to have my computer fixed by Norton right now because of malware. I was told that Malware bytes couldn't fix this.
I was very unhappy as he led me down his path to the $200 fix that I didn't feel was the problem in the first place. I strongly declined his offer and hung up. I spent hours cleaning up the computer and looking up router intrusion fixes. Checking the firewall was also done.
When all this was done, I tried to download the video again with no luck. That software company was contacted. Their free support took the time to ask questions and guide me. They, too, remotely viewed my computer. About 8 min. in we started discussing that I could download without the audio intact, but not if the audio were enabled. That finally led to the solution. Somewhat hidden in their software was a recording area that I had not seen or known about. I say hidden because it shows a camera, not a microphone. Since I had no bits of video to add to my video, I had ignored the selection.
With their built-in microphone, I re-recorded for the slides in my video. It worked great and downloaded just fine. Free support had found the issue that Norton wanted to 'solve' for me by charging me $200. Even if I had done their fix, it wouldn't have solved the issue at all, but I would have been out the money. Shame on you, Norton.