Eight Years of Norton Anti-Virus Loyalty Come To An End

The Norton Anti-Virus era ended at the Hillstrom residence. Eight glorious years of virus protection came to a halt yesterday.

The good folks at the Geek Squad paid us a visit, and for the low fee of nearly $360, they magically restored my wife's laptop computer to functional status. Our "agent" (that's what the Geek Squad calls their associates) told us that he sees many computers that have been rendered nearly functionless by Norton Anti-Virus 2006. Ours was one of them.

After removing Norton Anti-Virus (not as simple as doing an "uninstall"), the technician installed an anti-virus, anti-spyware version of software from Microsoft. Within seconds, my wife's laptop sprang to life.

If you were an executive at Symantec, how would you respond to an onslaught of problems of this nature? How do you restore faith in your product with a previously loyal customer base burned by software defects? If you were an executive at Symantec, would you compensate me the $360 I spent to have my machine fixed?