Have you ever listened to a few bars from Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" played over and over and over and over and over and over (and over) 200 times? You will if you ever find yourself so accursed to need Webroot's alleged tech support. I did, because Spysweeper was rendering the application that I use to make a living -- Tradestation -- all but inoperable. Spysweeper gets in the face of many other applications as well, making the already terminally buggy Windows operating system even more balky, recalcitrant and menacing. Here's another fact about Spysweeper: search 14 billion web pages and you will be unable to find a way to switch it off. Try to get an answer from Webroot, and they will tell you to right-click the Spysweeper icon in the system tray. I did, but even then, Webroot arose from the dead overnight, initiating an unauthorized, unncessary and unwanted scan that froze my computer and prevented other critical apps from running. Incidentally, after being put on hold this morning for 50 minutes trying to reach Webroot's tech support -- I called at 7 a.m. when they first opened! -- I have now been on "Straight, No Chaser" hold for an additional 15 minutes, waiting to talk to someone about refunding me for the nearly three years remaining on my Spysweeper subscription. And now, after holding for 20 minutes for the refund guy, I am told that my window of opportunity for this expired 30 days after I purchased Spysweeper. End of story.

I've been a paying customer of Webroot's Antispyware for many years. It was recently extended into a full Antivirus with antispyware. I've always been happy with the product and moderately happy with support. However, the level of technical support has now sunk to drastically low levels. After they added a new online backup function to the software, I decided to try it, but execution failed with an obscure error message. I opened a support request but it was immediately and aut0matically closed and I received an automated e-mail with stacks of links to help articles having no relation to my problem, telling me to reopen the problem if it was still not solved. They are obviously trying to reduce the number of support requests to handle. I was told to upload an auto-generated report, which I did. Two days later, I was asked to call their support number for further assistance. It gave me a choice between an estimated waiting of 25 minutes and paying €29, 95 for quick support, so I hung up. I asked when would be the best time to call: Morning. I called 8 AM Webroot time and the estimated waiting was 30 minutes. It's a freecall number if calling from the US but not if I call from France, as I do. I asked again for support online. I was told how to remove Webroot completely and reinstall it. So I did. Then the backup failed with a different, obscure error message. Next answer: "As this is a French O/S [XP] the U.S. support cannot assist you. Please contact our European support department." My Webroot is in English. I didn't ask for XP support. So why don't I call the French support number? Because it's a premium rate number costing $0.17 a minute. Their UK support number is a local rate number, but it's not local rate if I call from France. So French customers have the privilege of being ripped off by Webroot for calling support, whereas it's free for US customers and UK customers pay a fraction of the French price. Why are they trying to racket French customers in particular? Isn't our money as good as money from the US or what? The argument that it won't work because it's a French XP is total nonsense. System interfaces are never language sensitive; only user interfaces. I'm a mainframe systems programmer and I simply don't buy that sort of argument. If the software really wasn't meant to work on any other language version than English, it would detect the conflict very early on during installation and abort. It didn't, so pretending there is a language incompatibility is BS. They simply don't want to provide free support ("free" meaning, as part of what I've paid for the software) but are deliberately providing such miserable free support that they intend to have customers paying again to get what they've already paid for working. I purchased the software over the phone to the US and I've paid exactly the same price as a US customer. So why would I want to renew my licence next time if I can't get support? Such crappy "support" is what makes me wonder if there isn't a better product on the market.