why did AVG techinical support rep lie to me by saying that it can only now be repaired by remote access?

Question

The configuration of my OS went bad. AVG vanished from computer. Some corruption of registry keys was the problem. I contacted AVG technical support and then he referred me to an expert. The expert called me on phone and said it will be fixed by remote access but I have to pay 200 dollar fee. I told him that i will simply re-install the OS. He said that there is no way I can fix this on my own and it definitely requires remote access and that they will do PC tuneup and clean all the registry, even repair the OS and they have special tools which are not for public. Then he persuaded me to pay the $200 fee and told me to get my credit card ready and that an automated machine will take my information. I said i'll try on my own but he kept insisting to pay $200 or else the entire computer will get damaged due to infection. I hung up the phone. He called 2 times and I didn't pick up. Then I simply re-installed the entire operating system and the problem was solved. It was that simple.

Answer 1

Because they was trying to scam you, It was not an AVG rep u spoke to. You did the right thing. Did the person on the phone sound Indian?

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

SCAM SCAMMY SCAM SCAM......You most certainly weren't dealing with anyone from AVG- no official employee of a reputable company would ever, EVER try to bully a customer or demand money for a service that incidently AVG DOESN"T EVEN PROVIDE. Those are usually the kind of tactics scammers would use, I am certain that this twit you talking to was not an AVG rep, that the computer "issues" you were having were actually deliberately caused by malware that managed to install on your system- there was no registry problems etc, it was all faked to scare you into contacting the (also bogus) tech support and giving the scammer your credit card details and/or access to your PC, this malware will also spoof the error mesages and the AVG contact details (these were fake too).

On the upside...you didn't give the scammers what they were after, and your PC is cleaned of their crap you don't have to worry about that. Only ever contact an antivirus provider like AVG etc directly via their official website.

Answer 4

This was NOT AVG, they do NOT offer support for free versions, and they offer NO remote assistance. You have been contacted by one of the scam false anti-virus companies. I hope you did not call a number from a popup on the machine, or follow a link which popped up. You had spyware. All you needed to do was to connect by network cable and start into safe mode with networking. Then downloaded the free scanner from http://malwarebytes.org. A full scan would have removed the infection. Re-installing does not always remove infections, it often leaves dormant files lying around the drive, but it hides the traces a proper tool needs to remove those. The people who contacted you were probably seeing everything you did on the machine. and now they have your number there will be other telephone attempts to scam you or your family.

Answer 5

Very strange! Most computer companies dont ship CD anymore because they have hidden partition with image of os on HDD. Then you just hit F12 or some other F key combo and then you can reinstall off of the image on the drive. Still the so called Expert sounds like a bit of an scam artist. Long story short, you did the right thing. I do virus removal myself for my clients and to be honest the nasty bugs are only caught by removing the HDD and connecting to different machine (scanner) and run through various scans. I hate it when others say they can clean your system remotely. that is crap. Some rootkits are only cleaned out by clean install. Even some real nasty bugs can even survive through that.

They get into BIOS chip on motherboard and other hidy holes. I dont even bother doing remote connection if the client has virus issues. I tell them to bring it in to my shop, it is the only way to do it properly.

Answer 6

Glad to hear you didn't fall for their "only we can fix it"...scam....................