July 03, 2008 @ 7:27 PM 3 Comments

For the last couple of days I have had some problems with my McAfee account. For some reason it wouldn’t accept my password. Although I was quiet sure I was using the right one, as I had written it down when I created the account.

After trying to get a password retrieval email at least 3 times on Monday, I contacted customer support yesterday with my problem. McAfee has a great system that allows you to get customer support for free, or well nearly free. They have an online chat system that allows you to talk to an employee, instead of calling them. This is a great service as you don’t have any extra costs on top of your internet subscription, in contrary of using the phone service.

When I contacted the Customer Support yesterday, I explained my problem and hoped it would be solved quickly. I mean how hard can it be to get an email send to my email address I registered with? I couldn’t have been more wrong, after more than 30 minutes in the chat, the only thing I achieved was that the employee could tell me my email address (which I submitted before the chat) and when I resubscribed to their service (and I already knew that too!).
Even though he tried his best, or at least that’s what I assume, he couldn’t solve my problem and told me they had server problems, so to ‘keep trying with the old email and password’.

Great advice! After trying a few times with the previous settings, my account gets blocked! And of course the only way to unblock it, is to retrieve a new password by email.

All I wanted to do was bang my head against the wall, but considering that wouldn’t do me (or my computer) any good I decided to have one more go at the chat support today. After some server updates on McAfee’s side I finally got a hold of a representative and within 15 minutes all was working again. He understood the problem immediately, reset my account and password, gave it to me in the chat and asked me to try and login.

I could login instantly and was prompted to change the password. Which I have written down, once again. Now my computer is protected again and I feel safe. I just wonder why the first representative couldn’t have done this yesterday, it wouldn’t have frustrated me as much.

Overall I’m very satisfied with their Customer Service. I have had a slight problem before with my set-up and contacted them through chat then, everything was solved within 10 minutes then too. So all in all 2 out of 3 and for free is definitely not bad. Especially if you compare it to other Customer Services.

What’s your best or worst experience with Customer Service and did it eventually get solved?