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Not had a reply to my support ticket

  • 16 October 2012
  • 17 replies
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Userlevel 1
It's getting on for 55 hours since my support ticket and no responce..........
 
I just want to get mywebroot working again!
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Best answer by stevecosta 27 October 2012, 16:24

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17 replies

Userlevel 6
Badge +21
Its been since last thursday when my support ticket was raised. Still no response and no backup and sync.
Userlevel 7
They will get back to you gibbo10.
 
Thank you for being so patient, we are placing much of our efforts on the Backup & Sync transition.
I have been waiting nearly 3 hours .... have i really got over two days to go?  I live out in the sticks in Thailand and have had to drive 15 miles to somewhere i can get wifi, so i can get a decent connection to get my computer fixed. 
 
I cannot believe the webroot apology to you that they are sorry but the team is working on other things!  Surely we pay for a service that is going to get up up and running again quickly and with the least fuss.  I used to have the much maligned Norton.  The product may not have been so good, but help response was immediate, and i ws never left hanging for days. 
 
My subscription will be ending in a few days and i am definitely going to be reading the product comparisons.  Does anyone know how to make sure this thing doesn't automatically renew ... at least then its my choice.
Userlevel 7
Well, I am having the exactly opposite experience. I had installed Norton Internet Security for almost 9 years and sorry to say but their support was terrible. Nothing to compare with Webroot, indeed. They (Webroot) keep primacy as far as the support is concerned and others should learn from them.
 
BTW, I think you misread Mike's post, please read it again.
 
So I don't wanna persuade you that the sky is blue, just rather sharing my honest experience and showing to other community visitors that not all WSA users have the negative feedback.
Userlevel 7
@ wrote:
I used to have the much maligned Norton.  The product may not have been so good, but help response was immediate, and i ws never left hanging for days. 
Hello Monte-d, Welcome to the Webroot Community Forum. :D
I guess you haven't been reading the Norton Forum lately? You might just want to read some of their posts on Customer Service.
Not all Customer Service is perfect, but Webroot's CS is the best I've seen. ;) 
Its really good to hear that some folk are getting really good support.  Unfortunately my experience has not been good.  This is the second problem I have had. 
 
The first took three days to fix.  I had the remnants of a virus which Webroot had partially cleaned.  The most noticable side effect was that I could not download anything.  The first two days of the response went along the lines of 'download this and run it', 'have you read my problem', 'oops download this instead', 'there's a hole in my bucket'.
 
After two days I finally had the brainwave to go out and use another computer to download the program (ok not much of a brainwave, but the webroot guy didn't have the nouse to suggest it).  Also I finally got through to a more senior technician who I have to say was brilliant.
 
I do believe that Webroot guys will eventually fix almost anything, but I have been waiting now for 24 hours with no reponse from them whatever.  That is unacceptable.  Gibbo10 was still waiting after 55 hours (more than two days).  Mate, if you read this, let us know how long it finaly took.
Userlevel 7
Hey Monte-d. I am sorry for the bad experience, we do our best to take care of things quickly.
 
Your ticket is being handled by one of our threat research members and was responded to yesterday. The support system brings your ticket to the top of the queue when you post a new response. The reason you did not get a hastier response when you re-opened your ticket is because you posted 7 times in a row. When you do this, the ticket shows up as a new request and it actually works against you. Tickets are handled in the order they come in and when you post 7 times in a row, it looks like the 7th post was the most recent one and it becomes a "newer" response.
 
I do apologize for your experience.
Userlevel 7
@ wrote:
The reason you did not get a hastier response when you re-opened your ticket is because you posted 7 times in a row. When you do this, the ticket shows up as a new request and it actually works against you. Tickets are handled in the order they come in and when you post 7 times in a row, it looks like the 7th post was the most recent one and it becomes a "newer" response.
Lesson learned. ;)
Maybe Webroot should put a note or warning on All incoming Support Ticket's about this for all members to see. 
Userlevel 7
@ wrote:
Lesson learned. ;)
Maybe Webroot should put a note or warning on All incoming Support Ticket's about this for all members to see. 
 
Hmmm... Yes...  I'm glad you're going to put it in as an idea. :)
After all, the people who are posting over and over are generally the ones who are most impatient and don't realize that every time they add another reply, it puts them at the back of the line, so to speak.
Userlevel 7
Thanks Kit. Idea Posted: http://community.webroot.com/t5/Ideas-Exchange/Warning-Note-on-All-Support-Tickets-in-Queue/idi-p/13366
Userlevel 1
As I started the topic thought I should give an update. I raised the ticket (Oct 14, 2012 9:27) and got a  (Oct 17, 2012 1:12) that's about 64 hours!  Although my issue is unresolved as it stands responses since have been within an acceptable time frame.  I guess that I was unlucky that it coincided with the back up and sync upgrade which I'm thinking didn't go quite according to plan.  Just a response to say "All our engineers are busy dealing with the latest upgrade, we will get back to you as soon as one becomes available " would have been good. My delay wasn't due to repeated logging.
 
Unfortunately as I say my issue is unresolved the engineer needs to deal with it by telephone but as I live in the UK and the engineer is in the USA the time zone difference means either I need to get up very early or go to bed really late to deal with the problem. I don't know if there are UK based engineers, I shall ask.
Userlevel 7
Hi Gibbo10,

You'll be pleased to know that we do indeed have UK-based support engineers as well, and one of them should pick up your case. We also have a few engineers in Australia, just to keep global coverage optimal across the board. 🙂
My problem has been fixed. As last time, when i finally got through to an engineer who could look at my system, he was tremendous.  Very knowledgable and very helpful.  thank you.
 
However, some of the replies that have been posted to my concerns have been complacent to say the least.  Gibbo10 waited 55 hours for his reaponse.  I waited three days to resolve everything.  That is not acceptable, when customers may have a virus that is wrecking their system.  You should never lose sight of the fact that the customer has this problem because the all singing all dancing software you advertise has probably failed.  I know there will always be new viruses and the software cannot be expected to find everything, but then the customer should be able to see you pulling out the stops to fix things.
 
I would like to make some (hopefully) constructive suggestions:
 
i)  when the customer creates a ticket, give an idea of timescales for a response
ii)  if it is an email response, 'come back tomorrow', tell us, but do not pretend that it is a conversation.  If immediate response is not possible book a time when it will be.  It is not acceptable to have a customer hanging on waiting for a response that may be a day away
iii) once a technician is on the case he stays on the case.  He is dealing with you until it is fixed. not going around 50 cases at once.  A customer should never be dropped for minutes at a time, or 12 hours as I was in the middle of a 'conversation'
iv)  It is ok to have a junior technician handle the initial query and go through the obvious fixes first, but there needs to be a more efficient way of progressing on to a senior technician.  You shouldn't wait until the customer is tearing his hair out.
 
Webroot, you are good when you get around to acting ... but that is so painfully slow and frustrating, and at a time when a customer is really worried.  My subscription expires in two days.  I am afraid that I will not be renewing.  In the words of your extremely complacent replies to me .... 'lesson learned'.
Userlevel 7
Hi Monte-d,
 
I would like to clarify when I replied "Lesson Learned". This was not stated directly at you. It was for all members that we all learned a lesson on how Support Tickets get queued. I sure didn't know this until MikeR explained how they work. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, I should have explained it better in that post. You may want to post your suggestions in the "Idea Exchange"
https:///t5/Ideas-Exchange/idb-p/Ideas
i)  you should obviously be aware that some of my 7 messages were not all out of frustration.  some were adding additional information for you
ii) if customers are waiting 3 days for a response then you should expect some additional meesages along the lines f 'how long should i be waiting', 'did you get my last message, are you waiting for a reply from me'
iii) I hve tried to be constructive in my criticism and give some ideas for improvement.  Maybe you could issue a ticket number as soon as a problem is raised.  That way any additonal messages would be attached to it and would not clog your system
iv) please do bnot blame customers for your own shortcomings.  There are two customers on this thread who had to wait unacceptable amounts of time for a response.  Admit that you have a big problem, look at ways to fix it, and keep your customers informed.  Ubfortuanately at present your only answer seems to be to pass the buck, and lose as many customers as needed to bring support to an acceptable level.
v) Things will go wrong in any business.  I do not believe that a business should be judged because something has gone wrong.  I believe a business should be judged by how it reacts when something has gone wrong.  I am surprised, because so far Webroot is failing badly.
 
Lastly i apologise if you receive two very similar replies from me.  When i sent the last one i got an error message 'Exception ID: 38B18491'
Userlevel 7
Hi Monte-d,

I'd like to clarify that ProTruckDriver is a customer like yourself, and not a Webroot Employee. Your most recent reply seems to be in response to him directly. Webroot employees on the Community have the little green W next to our names. However, I'd like to address your concerns.

Looking at your case, it appears you contacted us on Saturday, Oct. 20, and your issue was fixed entirely as of Monday, Oct. 22. By industry standards, that's actually pretty good. The vast majority of Antivirus providers on the market will actually charge you extra for a manual virus removal. Please keep in mind, we performed a manual virus investigation for you via a remote connection for free - that's generally unheard of in this industry. If you would like to try another solution, you are probably going to be disappointed in the service level of support by comparison.

It looks like we discovered your computer wasn't infected. While we certainly don't want customers left waiting (and if we can make improvements, we will), your computer wasn't actually infected, and the problems you were reporting weren't actually related to Webroot. I know that's no consolation for the wait, and I know waiting can be frustrating. We're very sorry about the wait.

I gather you wanted to chat with an agent rather than communicate by email. However, our support system works more like an email system than a chat (though sometimes when support queues are extremely low, it can seem like a chat). Sometimes, particularly when we're dealing with log files, which require a lot of investigation, parsing, drawing conclusions, etc, it's not really feasible to do that while simultaneously typing back and forth in a chat window. You know how when you take your car to the mechanic, they ask you to drop it off? It's sort of the same thing.

We experimented with chat at one point in the past, and as one of the people who used to do it, I found it actually ended up taking longer to resolve cases (and I wasn't even removing infections, which is the role of the person you were working with / that's far more meticulous work). This was because instead of the task order being "A. Read email B. Investigate logs C. Take whatever action that needs to be taken D. Reply to email," it ended up being "A. Read chat B. Investigate logs C. Read and reply to chat D. Return to investigating logs and try to find the spot I was in just before needing to reply to the chat again E. Repeat C. and D. quite a bit, thus lengthening the process. F. Fix whatever needed fixing G. Finish up the chat." That takes a lot longer, and while there were exceptions, satisfaction scores in general seemed to demonstrate that the email experience was the better experience by compairson.

Going back to the mechanic analogy, this would be like asking the mechanic to simultaneously repair your transmission while texting you a status update every few minutes along the way. And unless you're a car buff, probably the status updates of "I'm currently disconnecting the gear selector and throttle linkages" doesn't mean all that much to you. Likewise, "I'm running the results of wsalogs through a parsing utility, examining your VBSMSD, checking your system event logs, and noting a lot of Error 51's. Now I'm going to scope our your WRData directory," probably doesn't mean much to you until a conclusion is drawn from the entirety of the data and presented in understandable terms. In my experience, once the auto is at the mechanic, it's best to let them take care of the problem and let you know when it's done.

I like the idea of communicating an estimated response time to customers via the support system, but that's really hard to estimate. While it's doable on a phone wait for a non-infection issue (given a margin of error), who is to say how long a set of logs will take to review or how complex an infection we are working against? If we exhaust all of our options as individuals, sometimes we'll have to consult each other. I've seen cases handled in anywhere as short as 5 minutes to some more rare cases that need to be sent up to development for a code fix, and those tend to take significantly longer than anyone will want to sit in a chat room.

However, if it ever looks like the response time is going to exceed 72 hours, we'll be sure to reply back and let you know the status of your case, because 72 hours is our official worse-case-scenario response time.

I'll follow up on your concerns with support, and please know, we are doing the best we can, and we value your business.
Userlevel 6
Badge +21
Ji,
Just a note to all readers.I originally posted NOT HAD A  REPLY TO SUPPORT TICKET.I would likr to say thankyou to the support team who have now resolved my problems. On a couple of occasions they took control of my pc and the issues have been sorted. The support I recieved was  very friendly and the agent seemed very knowledgeable.Thanks webroot.Satisfied customer. 

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