I wish I would have gone another route.

This was a ‘license’ for 3 PCs. As such I installed it on 2 windows 7 laptops and a Windows XP Media Center 2005 desktop.

It does seem to have a good feature set but it is not reliable. The software when it’s working seems good but it keeps shutting down or crashing. The icon in the notification tray will turn grey at random, will give an error that it is not responding forcing the PC needs to be rebooted to get it back up and running. This happens constantly on one of my windows 7 laptops and on the xp machine. Also getting this error constantly “vsserv. exe has caused an error and needs to shut down”.

I have opened over 5 tickets with Bitdefender support which has been way below standard. The first ticket was closed by them after providing a solution of “run the update”? I was not impressed as another ticket I opened was that the AV definition files would not update. The update would fail to contact the server and the PC would have to be rebooted to make a connection, despite my having a working high speed connection. It would usually be days after before I would notice that it hadn’t updated. So for several days my PC would be running out of date Anti Virus definitions.

This added with the constant crashes left my computer vulnerable. If the AV isn’t running, or it isn’t up to date, how can you trust that your PC is secure?

This was happening on all 3 machines. I’m assuming that there is another piece of software on these machines that may be in conflict with Bitdefender. Unknown at this point as their tech support was unable to resolve. Complete uninstall and reinstall of Bitdefender did not resolve the issue. Unsure if the install bits I have are corrupt or not. The install provided by Bitdefender was over an internet connection. They did not provide me with a hard copy (DVD) of the install bits and the downloaded version of the new install file from Bitdefender had the same result.

Working with their support was a lost cause and after a few months of this nonsense I asked them for a refund.

Their response was “NO”. Even though you don’t purchase software you license it (2 yr license in my case). Their reply was that after 30 days of purchase no refunds. So I’m paying for a 2 year license I’m not able to use.

After several emails to their customer service in regards to the issue. Advising I know longer trusted this application to protect my pc they still refused to give a refund. I received (2) phone calls from their tech support wanting to troubleshoot further. Was bad enough that it had been months into this at this point, and the software wasn’t working, but the tech support who was calling had English so bad I had difficulty understanding them.

Their final solution given was to have me format my (3) three computers so as to get their software to work. This was not an option.

I have been working in IT for several years and hold over 15 industry certifications in the field. In all my experience in dealing with buggy software this has to be the absolute worse in terms of dealing with the software and its customer service.

I would not recommend this software to anyone. Not just because of my technical issue but because of how their customer service and tech support were unwilling to refund my money when they failed to resolve the issue. Reformatting one of the PCs may have been a viable troubleshooting step to try and narrow down what was causing the issue, but a customer should be able to say no at this point if they choose to and get a refund. There has to be a deciding line as to when enough is enough, and how much one should have to work to get something to function as it should. Their are certain expectations every customer has when they make a purchase from a software vendor. Not only to the quality the software, but the support expected from its vendor as well.

If there was a minus star I would have given one. Seems to be a good program when it’s running but its not reliable. Tech support and customer service way below standard.

I’ve since installed another AV/Firewall solution and low and behold. It does not crash. Go figure.

I’ve still received no refund or further correspondences from BitDefender

Rating: 1 / 5

Price: B+

Quality: B

Compatabilty: B 1/2-

Overall: B 1/2+
Rating: 4 / 5