Failing Annual License Renewal Process

I paid for the annual license renewal last night but F-Secure will not give me the software download and also there is no place to enter in the new license key because the 'product has expired' and does not allow me to interact with it anymore.

 

 I am left screaming at my PC and F-Secure with no ability to do anything about it. I cannot even interact with the 'online chat' as no-one ever answers it. I cannot log in to oher help features as F-Secure never recognises it. To say I am angry is a major understatement. You have taken my money but you have not delivered the product and service. Now I am left having to subscribe to this community board in a last hope that F-Secure will actually help their customer. I am a busy person running a business and my PC's are now unprotected thanks to the failed process from F-Secure.

 

What can be done?

Comments

  • thnaks you for your help. I wish F-Secure Customer Service was as helpful as you but cearly they are not. They are so comprehensively incompetent that on phoning that PHONE number they refer callers to their website and there is actually no human being on the phone offered as part of the extended so called 'telephone support' menu.

     

    This underlines the problem - I cannot get help from the company who has just taken my money. It is not only unprofessional - its is anti-customer. I am appalled.

  • Blackcat
    Blackcat Posts: 503 Influencer

    @ not so Jolly_Roger

     

    Yep I agree that support has appeared to let you down so far; unusual for them.

     

    Although you have tried them before, try their Online CHAT again. I have always found them very helpful and contactable everytime I have tried them even on Sundays.

     

    I would also send them an email response; only takes a few minutes; 

     

    http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/home_global/support/contact/request. Ignore request for a FSDIAG. file.

     

    or 

     

    http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/business_global/support/contact/request

     

    I have also pm some of the F-Secure Mods here to answer your post as soon as they log on here.

     

    Hopefully they will have you up and running asap. Hang on in there.

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 Former F-Secure Employee

    Hi Jolly_Roger, you'll hear from us soon.

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 Former F-Secure Employee

    Hello Jolly_Roger,

     

    Sorry to hear that you have issues with our products and difficulties with getting in touch with our support team.

     

    If you still haven't tried or managed to reach our support via chat or telephone, you can always open a support ticket by simply filling the following form.
    http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/home_global/support/contact/request

     

    Please precise what product (version) you use, the reference of your renewal or the method use to renew.
    Finally to speed up the support request provide an fsdiag to see the actual status of your installation.

     

    Rest assured that we try our best to provide you with the quickest highest quality support.

     

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 Former F-Secure Employee

    Hi Jolly_Roger,

     

    Sorry to hear about that. Can you please send me a Private Message with the following details:

     

    1) Your phone no including country code.

    2) Your latest Order No with F-Secure

     

    I will try to speed up the proceess by having someone to ring you.

     

    Thanks.

     

    ---
    Best regards,
    Fendy

     

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0 Former F-Secure Employee

    Hi Jolly_Roger!

     

    Just following up to see if you have received any personal support and, hopefully, cleared up your issue.  If it has been solved, it would be great if you could let us know what the solution was, so others with the same problem might also be helped in this matter.

     

    Sorry you experienced so much run around; I hope in the future your experience is more pleasing!

     

    // Chrissy

  • To all those people here who have responded to my plea who are not employed with F-Secure and/or who are not appointed agents of F-Secure - many thanks for your kind help. It reminds me that customers are often more helpful and reliable in dealing with issues with 'suppliers' than the suppliers themselves. This has been true in this case, and it is a sad indictment of the failure of F-Secure to fulfil the most basic requirement of helping a customer  - to update their security software quickly and painlessly.

     

    For those of you who are agents or employed by F-Secure - your 'help' is all too late, and it sickens me that I have had to make my problem 'public' on this forum to get a response from F-Secure, when I followed the official routes carefully several times only to be frustrated at every turn. I have never been so angry and stressed in all my life with a supplier of any kind. I rely on my computers being secure and when presented with Internet Security alert page that tells me I am no longer protected AND does not let me interact with it to update the software - then I know  my security is threatened and I have made a mistake in choosing this company. This is not the way ot used to be - something has changed with the renewal process, but for the last three years including this one, there has been a failure of some kind on renewal - resulting in me having to call F-Secure and get someone to remotely make a change on their system to renew my licence. Normally it is because the updated license key is refused by the software - so F-Secure have to intervene. No explanation why of course it fails.

     

     Reading this you may not realise what its like to feel the intensity of negative feeling when you have no ablility to get help with something that has great importance to you. After all its just 'a renewal' isn't it? Why get so stressed? The worst part about this was seeing the F-Secure dialogue box in bright red ink saying "you are no longer protected" when I could not get it to update. It felt like I was being held to ransom by F-secure. Not the intention of the software develpers I hope. Was it to scare customers into renewing I wonder? If so then you succeeded - I was very scared. You won - I lost. I renewed through fear, but not before you really induced massive stress by failing to deliver the download and failing to help me when it failed. In the end,  I found another way of renewing quite by accident, no thanks to F-Secure. I am sick of all of this - the amount of time it as stolen from my life and the stress, and I am now sick of the words F-Secure.

     

    Once again - a big "thank you" to customers here who are community members who offered me help - I appreciate it greatly. Keep helping others - let them benefit as they may also be driven here because of failures in the official customer service offering like I was. Without you the customer may be on their own. Better still - send them to another supplier. I cannot face going through this stress again next year so I will find another Internet Security supplier for me and my employees.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Ondrej
    Ondrej Posts: 5 Former F-Secure Employee

    Dear Jolly_Roger

     

    Please accept my sincere apologies for the troubles you went through. I understand if it changes nothing in the way you feel about us, but what happened to you is not normal practice for us.

     

    We more than value our customers, and we wish that this value is reflected in both the quality and performance of our products and the service we deliver to support them. Therefore we are just as disappointed about what happened as you are.

     

    While I can at this stage only speculate on what went wrong with your key code registration I am equally concerned about your difficulties in contacting us. Our Customer Care agents for Consumer Products operate in three shifts around the clock, seven days a week (in English language), and are  reachable via phone, e-mail (through a web form) and via chat.

     

    Not responding at all to your call for help on all three channels is a failure on our part that we are not willing to accept, and will take it on myself to investigate further what happened during last Wednesday.

     

    As for the software registration itself, the expected behavior of our software would have been to start warning a month before expiration, and it should always be possible to enter a new key code to extend the license at any time.

    Be it weeks or month before or after the software expires.

     

    I would be more than grateful if you would be willing to let us know whether your installation failed to display a reminder to renew your license in time, and what behavior prevented you from entering a new key code. Needless to say that we have a genuine interest to avoid such crucial software failures to avoid a similar ordeal for other customers.

     

    Again my sincere apologies for the distress and inconvenience caused both by your challenges in renewing your license and by our not responding to your attempts to contact us.

     

    Kind Regards,

    Ondrej

  • Dear Ondrej

     

    Thank you for at least making the late effort to reply and apologise for what was frankly a disgustiing lack of help when I needed it most. Unfortunately you are too late.

     

    Because I spent so much time on the 'renewal' issue already, and because it was such an intensly horrible experience from start to finish, I don't want to accept 'the money' from you. Money does not solve the problem, as the problem lies in the following: -

     

    • Threatening scaremongering alerts within the product to coerce the customer into renewing
    • Unclear renewal process - ambiguous language/instructions
    • Failing renewal process (no downloads downloaded from within product or from direct website)
    • Nil customer service and help at the point of renewal purchase and attempted download
    • Late customer service well after the 'renewal event' was over (your message above)

     

    The product is working on two out of my three computers but I dare not enter into the vortex of frustation and misery by attempting to download F-Secure IS to my third upprotected computer. It is just not worth the trouble, as no doubt I will expereince the same horrors all over again.

     

    Instead - perhaps you can help me?... by recommending (1) another paid Internet Security provider instead of F-Secure, and (2) a free Internet security package for my third PC (Wn XP)  that will see me through to the end of the current F-Secure licence I have ( about a year) when I will switch to another provider. This would be real help for me.

     

     

  • Simon
    Simon Posts: 2,667 Superuser

    I sympathise with your frustrations.  Renewal of F-Secure is not usually such a fraught experience for most users.

     

    Do you still wish to have F-Secure installed on the third machine?  If so, is there anything we on the forum might be able to help with?  If so, we would need to know what previous actions have been taken in trying to renew / install the product, a description of what the failings were (if other than you've already said), and what the situation is now.  Assuming you have a valid subscription key, did you try uninstalling the 'expired' product, then downloading and reinstalling from scratch?  A new installation usually prompts for the subscription key in the first stages.

  • Ondrej
    Ondrej Posts: 5 Former F-Secure Employee

    Hello Jolly_Roger

     

    You will understand that I cannot comply with your first request, while I do assume it was not meant sincerely anyways  Smiley Wink

     

    But I am willing to provide you with an entirely new subscription key to circumvent your renewal problems as you asked for.

     

    However, since we cannot exchange personal data like contact data or licenses keys publicly in this forum I would kindly ask you to open an official support ticket and refer to this community thread. Instructions follow.

     

    I will take it then from there. Hopefully we can your third computer back to a protected state so that you can safely connect it to the internet again Smiley Happy

     

    With Best Regards,

    Ondrej

     

     

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