In our continuing saga of a quack that had gone to the dogs, we pick up where we left off last.

Since the customer had been using POP email, the inability to use Exchange was a problem but not critical.
After 2 months of ESET not being able to solve the issue we ramped up our complaints asking for higher level techs, our (my business) was never responded to and the customer rarely heard from ESET. The growing problem was instability on the network. Finally ESET plainly stated “not our problem”. This was exceptionally frustrating for us, a company that is an authorized dealer, and that ESET had been so good for so long in the past with service…

We luckily found an ESET removal tool (yes, like the Norton removal tool) on their site, yet their tech support apparently did not know about it. Once we used it the server and network became stable and Exchange started working (with some configuration changes). Our concern was that this was an active Exchange server, and that viruses Trojans et al could, and would, infect the system.

Since the customer had bought a 2 year license for ESET and with security a concern the customer wanted to reinstall ESET. The problem was now ESET tech support was responding with junk answers and questions and only responding once a week. Another 2 plus months later, with everything stable and much fussing at ESET the customer’s in house computer person convinced ESET to help out. ESET employees remoted in to the SBS 2008 server and installed their software.

While on the phone with the customer, the ESET technician claimed that they had not been quick to respond because they knew of a SBS 2008 issue, yet they never told us or our customer, who had been constantly attempting to contact them, about a known issue. Why not? More crappy service from ESET tech support?

That evening, after ESET installed their “new” version of the software, the customer installed the two latest Microsoft updates and rebooted the server. This was done remotely since it was late at night and some people actually want to go home.

The next morning all heck broke loose, no computers could get to the internet or the server. Since ESET was installed the customer called ESET and they recommended removing it again. The customer’s in house person did uninstall ESET but it did not solve the issue. Once again, ESET tech support did not tell the customer that they needed to run a removal tool. With the network down ESET had only one recommendation, “it must be your router”, a call to our tech support and the customer’s failure to tell of the ESET reinstall let to the same conclusion. This is why complete information is so necessary. The customer went off to Staples to buy a $70 Linksys router, can you say “oh crud!” After returning, the customer installs the new routers included disk into the server (double- oh crud!!).

By then one of our techs gets there and cancels the Cisco/Linksys software installation. Again, without knowing ESET had been reinstalled and removed, the tech spends about an hour trying to configure the SBS server to connect via Microsoft’s tools when “bam” there is a loud “pop” and all power goes out. After about 10 minutes of no power the tech updates the customer and leaves. Once out the front door, he connects with me where we spend about 45 minutes going over the status of the job. As I query him about ESET he lets me know he was not informed about the install and or uninstall.