BullGuard Resolves Customer Service Issue

In a recent post, I talked about poor customer service from BullGuard, the anti-virus software company. A relative of mine paid for their subscription to be renewed, but the money was lost and their protection was disabled.

I’m pleased to say that BullGuard have now resolved the situation satisfactorily and my relative is now happily using BullGuard once again.

After my previous post, I was contacted by both Ovidiu Anton, Head of Customer Support and Bronwyn Gascoigne, Australian Sales Manager.

I hadn’t realised that BullGuard has an Australian office. They aren’t listed in either the White Pages or the Yellow Pages and a Google search didn’t turn up any results.

There is now an Australian Office listed on the BullGuard Contact page, but this page only included the UK, Denmark and Romanian offices when the issue first occurred. There’s still no phone number for BullGuard’s Australian office, but that’s because BullGuard doesn’t have phone numbers.

BullGuard are a modern Internet based company that uses Live Chat for support. That’s fine for modern Internet users, but there are plenty of potential customers out there who are a little more old-fashioned and are looking for a phone number. That’s not a criticism, just an observation.

Anyway, BullGuard do have staff in Australia and they are very helpful, if Bronwyn’s example is anything to go by. Most of my correspondence was with Bronwyn who did a great job of communicating. She answered emails quickly, politely and clearly and advised us when the problem was resolved.

Bronwyn also sent my relative what appears to be 3 free copies of BullGuard. I’m not sure how long the licenses are for, but they’ll be able to give it to their friends to try the product. I may even give BullGuard a whirl myself – although I’m quite happy with Avast, so we’ll see.

The situation was probably helped by my relative sending a scanned letter from the bank, confirming that the cheque was sent to Global Collect BV. It wasn’t straight forward to get the letter or they would have done this sooner. I have to say that BullGuard really should have been able to investigate the situation without this letter.

It took about three days from the time BullGuard got the scanned letter, until the subscription was renewed and BullGuard started working again. It probably should have been done immediately – the problem was with Global Collect BV, not my relative – but anyway, BullGuard is working again and my relative is happy that the situation has been resolved.

In hindsight, it seems to have been a simple administration error between BullGuard and Global Collect (although my relative still lost out). The problem could have been avoided if a credit card had been the method of payment instead of a cheque.

The Lesson: Use a credit card when purchasing over the Internet.

There are concerns about credit card fraud online, but you’re probably protected by your credit card company. If you’re dealing with a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ company, a cheque may be fine, but if you’re dealing with an Internet based company, credit card is the way to go.

To conclude, BullGuard’s customer service was poor in the first place, but they recovered well and resolved the situation quickly, rather than let it fester. Thanks BullGuard for sorting this out!

Tags: customer service, scam, virus