To quote:
With a malware storm always on the horizon, you'd expect AV vendors to have among the best customer support programs. The last thing you'd expect is having to wait an eternity on an800-number listening to Burt Bacharach melodies only to tell your problems to a call center operator with a checklist ofquestions and stock responses."HAH!" I say from personal experience. If the problem can't be dug out of either the public knowledge-base, or the internal-only knowledge base, you are screwed. Exceedingly few vendors provide GOOD information in their public knowledge-bases. Generally speaking helpdesk techs are not that hot when it comes to wing-it troubleshooting. If they are hot, they get promoted to level 2.
Information Security, October 2004, p26
But that's exactly what Information Security found disturbingly often in our review of leading AV vendors' customer support.And they seem to agree. The article goes on to enumerate their findings. I won't go into detail, but it is a nice article describing some of the short-comings of the AV-industry customer support.