When it comes to antivirus software, the names that have always most readily come to my mind have been Norton/Symantec products and McAffee. So when my Norton Subscription ran out not too long ago, I felt comfortable going with a McAffee product, especially when I found that CompUSA sold the product for $50 with a $50 mail-in rebate.
Amongst the conditions for the rebate was proof that I was switching from Norton to McAffee, so when I purchased the product, I called the provided number and spoke to James, ID#0242. I explained that I no longer had the confirmation email from Norton. James cheerfully replied that I could instead send a screenprint of my system summary. This made no sense to me, since the system summary had no information that would indicate that I'd had Norton AV installed, but he reiterated that they would accept the system summary, so I screenprinted it and mailed it.
I thought no more about it until a couple months later when I received email and postcard indicating that my rebate had been rejected due to missing proof of upgrade.
So this morning, I called McAffee's rebate center. After holding for a couple weeks, I spoke to someone who apologised for "the incorrect information" provided to me by James. She told me that without the confirmation email from Norton, I couldn't get the rebate. I told her that I shouldn't have to pay for a mistake that they had made, and once I got angry, I asked if they were in the habit of misleading their customers - I'd been tricked out of fifty dollars. But she calmly responded that there was no one in her office who could do anything - I'd have to contact McAffee. Apparently, the McAffee rebate center is only an employee of McAffee.
I'm going to try to contact McAffee now. But I urge anyone reading this - buy somewhere else. McAffee is run by a bunch of lying SOBs.
I received the product, did all the paperwork, photocopied everything and mailed off the two rebate requests (in seperate envelopes, as instructed). I received the "Fry's" rebate, but the other was bounced because the receipt wasn't dated (!?).
A phone call informed me that they were looking for a cash register slip, not a dated Web receipt. "How then," I asked, "do you deal with the millions of shoppers who buy stuff from Web sites?" No good answer was forthcoming. I offered to send a photocopy of the charge to my credit card, but the person on the phone wasn't interested in that either. So, I'm out $30.
Note that BOTH rebates were mailed to Symantec (not Fry's) and the paperwork that was acceptable for one was not acceptable for the other.
OK -- fine -- I'll pay the game, as long as I know the rules. In my case, that means replacing Norton SystemWorks Pro every two years instead of every year.