Norton Auto Renewal taking money from banks

lemoog

My mother discovered that Norton (the antivirus people) had taken a chunk of cash out of her bank account, seemingly without her permission.

After searching the web I discovered that this is a known issue to the point where in the US they have won a payment for everyone who this happens to, google "Symantec, McAfee to pay fines over auto-renewals" to see the story

I spoke to Norton via their chat function and they were very helpful in cancelling the renewal and refunding the payments even without my mother's full account details, (social engineering problem here possible).

Fair enough but my mothers earlier contact with their support agents resulted in her loosing he cable internet connection. She was talked through what I can only guess was removing the PPPoE account details from her router and thus leaving her without a working connection. Not really a good effort on their "support" when she couldn't then use the chat function to cancel

To avoid this problem I will include the contact details from my conversation with Norton and suggest that anyone who wants to remove their products and get a refund refuses "IT support" and just go for the refund alone.

Norton support number + 44 (0) 20 7616 5600

My mother has Glaucoma and Cataracts and so it is quite possible that she missed the "untick to stop us grabbing money from your bank" checkbox.

Personally I would have though this came under the unreasonable contract part of the distance selling regulations in the UK for those that are not disabled but failed to see the checkbox

Symantec

Hello,

Sorry for the trouble. I am Vineeth and I am from the Norton Support team at Symantec.

Glad to know that you've received the refund. I am wondering why the technicians changed the router settings to provide a refund. If you have a Case Id for that interaction, please PM it to me. I will see why that happened.

The auto-renewal methods have changed lately. So when you purchase a Norton product, you have a option with a check box to enroll in to Auto-renewal. This check box is unchecked by default. So if you want to opt for auto-renewal, you can check this box. I hope that will eliminate the case of being enrolled accidentally.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you need any help with your Norton product.

Thanks!

Vineeth
Norton Support