Feb. 5, '09, I bought, 1st, their $99.99 antimalware online protection program and then was convinced to upgrade to the $199.99 program: a program that included online protection with unlimited tech support.By Feb 10, the online program had quit working twice. I had already called twice to ask them to repair it so on Feb 10, I cancelled: they had a 30-day no-questions asked guaranty. They told me I bought the program in November, but that didn't work so they kept me on the phone for 1 1/2 hrs. asking questions despited my repeated insistence that I wasn't satisfied, I didn't have the program, I didn't want them to repair it a 3d time, and that should be enough. Since then, they rewrote their guaranty and backdated it to 2005.
Every call involved a 20-minute wait, and they either kept me on the phone for 1-3 hours, checking with supervisors, arguing with me, cutting me off, or all the foregoing.
I was promised a full refund by Harry, Paddy, Amit, and Hardinger (which turned out to be a fake name). Harry, the first, said if I wanted a refund, they would have to do a system restore back to the date of purchase. As despicable as I felt that was, I needed the money as I knew I would have to pay for repairs to my computer, so I was forced to agree. I am on a fixed disability income, and they knew it. The system restore included reinstalling malware; removing my desktop; changing my clock to military time; leaving my computer much slower than it was before I bought their program; making it nearly impossible to download many programs, especially antimalware programs; and since then a continual degradation of my system to where I can now only enter info on websites and read email most of the time. It often crashes even then. This computer was brand new in December, '08.
Eventually, after much fighting, they refunded me $99.99 because I had upgraded, but refused to refund the rest ($199.99) despite that I had neither the program or the refund I was 4 times promised.
They also left a file on my system. I tried daily to remove it. I installed a firewall that showed me what was going through my firewall out from my computer: much info was going to Cyberdefender. I believe that is spyware.
Now, when I try to shop online, companies with whom I have never done business say my info doesn't match what's in their file on me. They shouldn't have a file. I had my credit card number changed because of Cyberdefender: the only people who had my personal and credit info were Cyberdefender, Google, and my ISP.
One day, I clicked uninstall on the Cyberdefender program and let it run for 3 hours. Then the Cyberdefender wizard appeared and uninstalled the program. A day or 2 later, Cyberdefender reinstalled that program and another, dated Feb 4, the day before I bought the program and most certainly without my authorization. The 2 programs together were impossible to remove. My computer began to crash so often, I spent 1/2 my online time logging back on. Finally, I could no longer get online. I have had to do 4 clean installs for that reason, but now my C drive, which is nearly empty, thinks it is full and I can no longer boot from a disk. I have had to delete everything but system files in order to use the system at all.
Having been promised a full refund 4 times, I made numerous calls to Cyberdefender to find out why I didn't have it. Every call was treated as if I hadn't called before. They argued, lied, were rude and horrible to deal with. They still wanted to repair their program a third time, and my computer. They were overeager to repair the damage to my computer. I suspect they know exactly what's wrong with it based on that eagerness. I said that would make me a customer again, which I did not want. They would never admit that I had cancelled, despite that I didn't have their program.
I referred back to the guaranty, I didn't expect the 3d repair of the program to last and by now wanted nothing to do with them. They had my money. I had no program. When I refused to let them do it their way, each time, they use their fallback position: they said I had used their tech support and they would keep $100.00 for that and refund me $99.99. I never used their tech support. I called them twice to ask them to repair their program. They called that help with viruses.
I still get their daily email phishing alerts, which I do not open. Even without their program, I can't get them to leave me alone. My bank agreed to get me a full refund. I hope they really do this time. I don't want any more email from Cyberdefender.
This company is as unethical as they get, and according to one tech at Gateway computers, a large number of help calls are from people who cannot remove that Cyberdefender file.
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