Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

When you buy the latest versions of Symantec’s Norton products, you are asked to establish a Norton Account.

This account retains the credit card information you used when you purchased your Norton (assuming you purchased or renewed online).

As a “convenience” to you, Symantec will automatically renew your Norton subscription when it is expiring using the credit card on file.  It will appear on your statement as “Norton *Annual Renewal”.

But what if you did not want to renew, choose to buy an updated off-the-shelf version, or even switched to another security software provide

When Did I Agree to Auto-Renew?

When you purchased or renewed your Norton software online there was a small text notification at the bottom of the shopping cart page with a checkbox that you were required to check to complkete your purchase.

As in most cases, the devil is in the details, so if you checked without reading, you agreed and that is why your card got dinged for the renewal.

How Do Opt-Opt of Norton Auto Renewal?

The easiest way to prevent an unwanted auto-renewal is to simply opt-out.  Symantec has made this inconvenient enough that many people may not do it, but it is not hard to do.

To opt-out, visit www.mynortonaccount.com and log in using the email address you used in your original purchase session and the password you were required to establish when you purchased.

Once logged in, click on the renewal center link at the top of the page and cancel the auto-renewals on the desired products.

What is the Easiest Way to Cancel a Billed Auto-Renewal?

Unfortunately, canceling is a lot more difficult than the automated renewal process.  Thankfully, it can be done with the right information.

Here’s what you will need:

• The first 6 digits of your credit card number used for the renewal (if you have multiple cards on your bank account, you MUST have the one you used to buy initially)
• The last 4 digits from the same card
• The name on the card
• The expiration date
• The email address associated with your Norton Account (your log-in name)
• Your order number (in the event you are trying to cancel an accidental purchase)

There are 3 ways to cancel your Norton Auto-Renewal after it has been billed to your bank account.

1. Call the toll-free number on your Bank statement – 1-877-294-5265
2. Use Symantec’s online chat to cancel
3. Fill out Symantec’s cancellation form

Call me a pessimist, but I don’t like to trust my refund to a fire and forget form.

I have tried the live chat option, but after a very long wait most of the associates did not know what they were doing and were unable to process my request.

After 5 hours of online chatting to get a $48.13 credit on my bank statement, I called the toll-free number.

The call made it to a live person in just a few minutes, and my refund was processed in 10 minutes.

Additionally, they removed the credit card information from my Norton Account all together so no other unintended renewals would happen in the future.

If you listen to my weekly radio show, have had your computer in to Schrock Innovations, or generally have not been living under a rock for the past ten years, you know that you need to have security software on your PC.

You probably know that you need anti-virus software and you might even know you need a firewall program.

However, Secunia.com reports that many security suites attempt to detect threats when they arrive at the PC rather than preventing those threats by closing the doors they come through.

Your Computer Can Catch H1N1 – Here’s How

Most security software works in a similar way to your immune system.  Your immune system sees a new intruder, fights it and defeats it.  It then creates a set of detections based on that infection’s signature.  Your detections are supplemented by inoculations (definition updates) to teach your body how to fight intruders it has never seen before.

Now imagine that a new intruder comes along and smacks your immune system.  Imagine this infection is H1N1.  Your body has never seen it before.  Your body will probably beat the infection, but there is a chance it could get through and cause all kinds of problems, even death.

To help reduce the risk of being exposed to the virus you are told to prevent infection by reducing the number of infection opportunities – wash your hands, cover your cough, etc..

When is the last time you reduced the risk of being infected by washing your computer’s digital hands with some serious anti-exploit soap?

So Why Don’t We Do That With Our Computers?

We are all told to get our Microsoft Updates and update our security software.  While these sound practices help reduce some infection opportunities, Secunia.com reported recently that 28% of the applications on your computer are probably insecure.

That means that common programs that most of us use every day like Flash, Java, Skype, iTunes, and more may be out of date.  Software programs are constantly under attack by an ever more sophisticated culture of digital thugs seeking to use your computer for their purposes.

Recently these thugs are finding it easier to attack your insecure programs to gain access rather than your more heavily fortified Windows Operating System.

If you keep all of your applications patched with their most recent security updates, you are in effect reducing the possibility that any viruses or malware infections will find a way into your computer – you are in effect washing your computer’s hands with some really good anti-bacterial soap.

This doesn’t take the place of good antivirus software, but it helps improve your overall security picture.

Think You Are Up To Date?  Scan and See

I own and run a computer repair company.  I read all of the boring stuff online about trends, infections, updates and the like.  I would consider my computer to have one of the cleanest sets of hands around.

I decided to run a free scan from Secunia.com to see how many of my computer’s programs are not up to date with the most recent security patches.  I was stunned:

Run the scan yourself and see how your computer does!

This month you could win a $1,500 Schrock Innovations 2009 Holiday Special PC with Solid State Hard Drive Technology just for watching the morning News!

Here is the spot that is running on Channel 10/11 to promote the contest:

I had some conversations with a client recently about their websites.  This is a multi-million dollar company that operates over 12 websites that are used mainly to promote their other products and services.

Each of their websites was attracting less than 15,000 unique visitors and each visitor was consuming about 2.25 pages of content per visit.  They were not making any money on the websites and that’s why they wanted to talk to me.

Defining Success:

They thought their web statistics were great, and they thought they just needed to find the right mix of technique and opportunity to cash in on their traffic.

I was in the uncomfortable position of telling him that the stats were not that great – a good start – but definitely not capable of generating the six-figure return they were seeking.

How would You Define Success With Your Website?

That got me thinking about how success is really a relative term.  It means something different to every person based on their expectations and who they are comparing themselves against.

Some webmasters would be perfectly happy with a couple hundred dollars of income every month, while others would be looking for thousands.

What is your dream website income and how close are you to achieving it?

Developing a Plan and Executing

Obviously for my client we needed to bring more traffic to his websites before he would have any hope of generating the kind of money he confided to be “success.”

It always comes back to content.  Sometimes you can beg, borrow, or even steal it – but it always boils down to you making some of your own.

Do you generate enough content to make your dreams of website success a reality?

Last Halloween I posted an quickie video that made the argument that Barack Obama is the famed Great Pumpkin.  I am not a spiteful man, but I have to point out that I told you so!

Sorry to all of you who hate political stuff

Alpha Antivirus is the latest fake-alert virus that is afflicting computer users on the Internet.

This variant popped up in late September, but is gaining traction as injected websites begin drifting to the top of search engine results.

How Do You Get Infected?

These fake alert infections typically come into your computer through internet web searches on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

The makers of these fake-alert infections create thousands of websites with valuable content on subjects they can easily rank in the top 10 results of popular web searches.

After these sites climb to an appropriate level, click-jacking code is inserted that will infect unprotected computers as soon as they visit the page – without warning.

Typically the only symptom of impending infection is a pop-up that warns you that your computer is infected (when it is in fact not).

How Do Keep My Computer Safe?

The best way to keep your computer safe is to have good virus protection software installed on your computer.

While technicians disagree to a degree on which program is the best to use, my opinion (based on HUNDREDS of infected PCs that Schrock Innovations has repaired) is that free antivirus like AVG is a problem waiting to happen.

I recommend Symantec’s Norton 360 software.  It offers some of the best protection on the market while also featuring the most user-friendly interface.

Those who are have had bad experiences with Norton in th past because it slowed dow their computers should note that the newer versions are MUCH lighter than the older versions (although any antivirus software will slow down your computer).

I was just informed the Schrock Innovations won #1 Independent Computer Repair Company in the Three Eagles Communications Best of Lincoln contest for the 8th year in a row!

Other winners were Best Buy and Quick Tek.  This award comes on the heels of Schrock winning the Nebraska Retail Federation’s 2009 Customer Service Business of the Year.

This year the voting for Best of Lincoln was spread over all of Three Eagles local stations.  The station group owns most of the top-rated radio stations in the city.  Voters were told to go to the website of the station they were listening to to vote in over 60 different business categories.

Listeners had to vote for a super-majority of the business categories for their vote to count.

Thank you to all of the listeners and customers that took the time to vote for Schrock Innovations.  Schrock takes its service lvels very seriously, and awards like these let us know we are on the right track.

Schrock Innovations opened its Omaha Service Center in 2003.  Due in large part to its local Omaha radio show, the service center was an overnight success.

Unfortunately, the station we were on flipped formats and we were not able to find another Omaha AM station that could match the success we initially had.

As many of our Omaha customers know, we regouped by concentrating all of our technical operations in Lincoln while focusing all of our web development services in Omaha.  This allowed us to maintain a token presence in Omaha and honor the warranties we had issued and service the customers who placed their trust in us.

In early 2009, we moved into our new $825,000 Service Center in Lincoln and found that the simple change in visibility DOUBLED our sales and profitability overnight.  That Service Center is now bringing in over 62 new customers each and every month.

Omaha’s Time Has Come

With all of our efforts going toward staffing, equipping, and launching our new Lincoln location, Omaha went without significant attention for over 12 months.

That is all about to change now.

Yesterday was the last day that our present Omaha location was open for business.  We have closed the Omaha location at 3032 N. 93rd and transferred all web development services to competent staff in Lincoln.

We are still honoring our warranties and serving our Omaha customers – we are just bringing our service to them rather than making them come in to us.

New Service Center in the Works

I can’t say too much about it at the moment, but I can tell all of our Omaha customers that a new Service Center is in the works.  This location will operate similarly to our famed Lincoln location with one notable exception.

This location will be geared toward mobile repair services rather than in-shop repair.

Our new location is tentatively set to open for business in the late first quarter of 2010.

Award Winning Service COntinues in Omaha

If you are a Schrock Omaha customer, you can still call our local Omaha phone number, 934-9423, and we will schedule an appointment that works with your schedule to come to your home or business to repair your PC or to take it back to our Lincoln Service Center for repair.

New York Times best selling author Chet Holmes is renowned for his business growth strategies. He’s perfected them over the past two decades, working with over 60 of the Fortune 500 and countless small to mid-sized companies and is now helping businesses of every kind and size implement these strategies to achieve breakthrough growth for themselves.

In his New York Times Best Seller, the Ultimate Sales Machine, he shared some of these strategies.

I am pleased to announce that the Computer Repair Business Weekly podcast has scheduled Chet Holmes to talk to our subscribers about the importance of a revenue model in your PC repair business.  Chet will also talk about some of the methods he uses to transform average companies to award-winning powerhouse organizations.

The Computer Repair Business Weekly podcast will be featured on the topITshop.com website and will begin posting in December of 2009.  Chet is a VERY busy man and is in high demand as a speaker and as a consultant.  We are fortunate he found the time to spend with us and I can promise you this is a podcast you will not want to miss.

Follow topITshop on Twitter to receive a notification as soon as the podcast goes live!

This week Schrock Innovations started a new series of commercials running on three different radio stations in Lincoln (KFOR, KZKX, and KIBZ) that talk about the features of the 2009 Holiday Special and the benefits of choosing a Modular PC.

Chris Goforth and I met up to make the spots and to be honest I was just not in rah-rah marketing mode that day.  I knew what I wanted to talk about, but did not have a script or even a bulleted list for that matter.

Chris and I were talking about what we wanted to do and I suggested that rather than the traditional commercial that we style the commercials in the same tone that we do our weekly radio show.  Chris agreed so he hit record and we went to work.

I have to honestly say that these commercials were the easiest, least forced, and most informative spots I have ever done for any product.  A couple days later Chris and I ran into each other at the studio and he even commented that when he hears the spots its like he has been teleported into our show for that minute.

Take a listen to these two spots and tell me what you think of them.

Spot 1 – The Features of the 2009 Holiday Special PC

Spot 2 – The Benefits of Choosing a Modular PC

We have a third spot that will begin running on Monday, that talks about Schrock’s award winning service.  I am not allowed to talk about that just yet, so subscribe to my RSS feed to hear all about it in your email Monday morning!