Living Dangerously
I recall reading about John McAfee, the founder of the anti-virus software company, McAfee. His later life reads like a cheap thriller novel or Dateline episode. After selling his company and declaring its software products scams that consumers should uninstall, he moved to Belize, only to get caught up in a murder scandal that had him running in exile from the small Caribbean country, often referred to as the Mosquito Coast. From there he played in the notorious realms of cryptocurrency and recreational drugs and ran for President of the United States in 2016 and 2020 under the Libertarian banner. His life ended in a flourish by his being arrested in Spain for U.S. tax evasion and while awaiting extradition he committed suicide by hanging himself. Naturally, there are those who said he was really murdered by some nefarious individuals. My personal suspicion is that is that he was indeed murdered, most likely by some poor shnook who agreed to an auto-renewal of his McAfee computer protection service in 1987 and has since failed to get that to stop.
I am pretty sure that I pay McAfee several fees each year and I am unable to cancel the services. After writing this I will have to go check my American Express account and track that down and try cancellation procedures once again. It’s been a long time since cyber-security has been a real issue for most of us and yet, there are still these protection racket companies around, the most notorious being McAfee and Norton. I really do not know what value they provide, if any, but I know that every once in a while I get an auto-renewal notice and am usually too distracted to take action and promise myself that I will get to the bottom of it at a later date. I have thought for a long time that these protection rackets are the sort of thing than Don Corleone would have loved in his youth in the tenements of the Lower East Side of New York and that they would have been a very profitable subsidiary of his Genco Olive Oil Company.
In fact, strangely enough, I have an olive oil Company called Nudo Adopt that also has an auto-renewal subscription scam going on. Years ago, I bought my sister Kathy a one year subscription to receive olive oil from her own tree in Southern Italy. It sounded like a cute , like naming a star for somebody, so I did it foolishly. She got and liked the olive oil, so I kept renewing it until I started to feel like I was being a total idiot. Then, one day, I got a notice from Nudo telling me that my credit card was expiring and that I needed to send them a new card to keep eating the olive oil. Aha! This was my chance for an escape, so I took it. That was perhaps two years ago and I still get emails from Nudo telling me that my card has expired and I need to send them a new one…or else. Lucky for me, organized crime has lost some of its mojo and other than more Nudo emails, I seem to have finally killed the beast. I wonder if Kathy still gets the olive oil?
Just today I got an email from Norton anti-virus telling me that they have charged my credit card for $499 based on an agreed auto-renewal program that I supposedly agreed to. I literally hardly ever use my laptop and am really only an iPad and iPhone use at this stage of life. I find little need for a laptop and only rarely find something that I need it for, so paying $499 a year to protect it from something that I am unsure needs protecting or that isn’t otherwise protected through the included packages with the laptop itself, seems silly and and a waste. If this was $49.99 or something I might have let it slide since all those microfee bugs running through and accumulating in my banking system are things I generally let RocketMoney cancel for me on a regular basis. RocketMoney is its own protection racket that I use to hunt out and cancel unwanted or bogus microfee situations. Anyway, the Norton email states at the bottom that they have an “immediate refund policy”, which I am sure is some agreement they have with the Federal Trade Commission or the CFPB to keep them out of trouble, and then in big red letters below that it says I have 24 hours to take action by calling a number. I did exactly that in what was about 30 minutes from when the email was generated.
Strangely enough, my telephone call went right to a live person. Not-so-strangely, that person sounded like he was somewhere in Southeast Asia and he was very polite. I told him I wanted to take advantage of the 24-hour cancellation capability. He started by asking me if I had an reference number, which I did from the email. He then asked me if I had an invoice number, which I did from the email. Now that he determined that I was not some doting old fool who did not know how to read a transmittal email, he told me that I needed to fill out some sort of cancellation form that could only be done on a computer. I railed at him that I only used an iPad and he told me that the form was only able to be filled out on a computer. He asked again if I had a laptop or desktop computer. I lied and said I did not. He then asked if I had access to someone else’s laptop or desktop computer. I lied again and said I did not and very angrily said that is why I did not want the stupid service anymore. I then loudly reread the exact verbiage from the email which declared that all I had to do was to call this number and that I would then be afforded an immediate cancellation opportunity. My agitation seemed to work and he quickly said that he would then have to institute a manual cancellation. Imagine my disappointment that I would be forced to manually cancel my Norton anti-virus service rather than to spend the extra time going on my computer to fill out a form that would probably be difficult to scan and then resend into Norton only to be told that I had, unfortunately, missed the 24 hour cancellation window that they had given to me.
I asked if we were done and he said we were. I asked if I would receive an email notification of the cancellation or if there was an confirmation umber I could record. He said there was no confirmation number but that I would, indeed, receive such a cancellation email in the next 24 hours. As suspicious as I was about that actually happening, I had no recourse but to say thank you and get off the phone. Now I am waiting for Norton to take the time to notify their virus department that they have anew prospect for attack while the anti-virus department generates the cancellation email and then credits me back for my $499 or whatever portion that excludes the prorated portion of the year that they will claim I had the benefit of their coverage. I feel a little like I’m about to live dangerously.
Wait a minute, I just got an email from Samsung offering me a new service. They tell me I can get $100 off if I sign up right now for their “Bespoke AI” service. I don’t know what it is, but it seems like a good deal. I mean, AI is all the rage, right? It goes on to explain that I will save a total of $1,300 by pre-ordering the full “Bespoke AI Bundle” and that I can win a chance to get a “Bespoke AI Kitchen Package” as well as a “Bespoke AI Laundry Combo”. You cannot make this shit up…that is a real email and I am told that this is all a CES Innovation Award Winner, so how can I refuse? I’m no dope, I wouldn’t dream of signing up for this scam until I talk it over with Kim and figure out all the reasons why it is critical to our comfortable life on this hilltop. I mean, I don’t want to be out there living too dangerously.