It has been a bad week for AVG. Not only has it managed to stop its Windows 7 customer's PCs from booting, it's also come under scrutiny from consumer watchdog Which? magazine, which has accused it of sharp practices in selling consumer anti-virus upgrades.
The sorry story started yesterday when it was reported that a faulty update to the free AVG antivirus package was preventing some Windows 7 machines from booting.
The update for AVG Free Edition 2011 asked users to restart their system, but when they tried they were met with the message: "STOP: c0000135 The program can't start because %hs is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem."
AVG has since withdrawn the faulty update, but admitted that customers who had already installed the software may have trouble getting their PCs to start, before claiming that only some machines running the 64-bit version of Windows 7 were affected by the bug.
Although its support forum has gone someway to help solve the problems, including booting affected PCs in Safe Mode and running a System Restore, before reinstalling AVG, it has said that it not yet released a tool to hep fix the bugs.
People who can't get their PC to boot at all are advised to follow a rather more complex workaround, involving AVG's Rescue CD utility.
These bugs are enough to put a potential customer off renewing AVG. But according to Which? they may not actually have much choice, with the company using sneaky tactics to get consumers to upgrade for another year.
Research by the magazine has cited AVG, along with Symantec as short-changing customers by cutting their anti-virus protection subscriptions without their knowledge.
It says that consumers who upgrade their anti-virus protection through discounted offers are in danger of being caught out. Discounted offers are sent via emails or appear as pop-up alerts on a user’s PC, urging them to upgrade their existing anti-virus protection to a more powerful version - usually at a reduced price.
If someone signs up to the offer, the new subscription starts immediately and they can lose months off their existing anti-virus subscription. Symantec Corporation, makers of Norton anti-virus software, and AVG both admitted that their discounted offers work in this way.
While the terms and conditions of the offers support the practice, the reality is that some consumers aren’t aware of the loss of remaining time on the security subscription they’ve already paid for.
"Symantec and AVG are operating a confusing and arguably misleading anti-virus upgrade service," said Sarah Kidner, Which? Computing editor.
"If consumers are given the opportunity to upgrade at a reduced price, it’s perfectly reasonable for them to expect their new licence to run on from the end of the existing licence."
1-Updates have been issued for both of these issues and are currently being propagated to the broad AVG user base.
2-For the next 48 hours, we are offering free technical support to our entire user base; anyone who has been affected by either of these issues.
PAID CUSTOMERS: Support for System crash after the recent AVG 2011 update 3292 (BSOD)
If you have encountered the above mentioned issue with the latest AVG update and FAQ 4079 didn’t help you, please contact our English support team by dialing the following numbers:
1-Home and Free customers: 24/7 support +1-877-367-9933 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting +1-877-367-9933 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
2-Business customers: 9:30am-6:30pm EST +1-828-459-5436 or skype:avg-nc
You can also email us at emailupdateissuehelp@avg.com.
FREE CUSTOMERS: Support for System crash after the recent AVG 2011 update 3292 (BSOD)
1-If you have encountered the above mentioned issue with the latest AVG update and FAQ 4080 didn’t help you, please contact our English support team by dialing the following number:
2-24/7 support: +1-877-367-9933
You can also email us at updateissuehelp@avg.com
We will personally lead AVG in working to resolve your issues, address any concerns, and regain your trust. AVG sincerely regrets any inconvenience this issue has caused and we are ready to help you resolve this as quickly as possible.
You pasted in that standard cookie cutter form letter well enough and it's a good thing you're letting people whose computers you broke talk to you about it. But the main issue you haven addressed is trust.
Aside from crashing boxes at an increasing rate, and the unscrupulous techniques to get renewals, how is it people should still trust AVG? I gotta say I don't.