We've been with hackersafe/mcafee secure for over 5 years now and each year the try to quadruple the subscription cost on us. Like most businesses we've been hit hard by the economy but we'd bit the bullet and done this as a perceived security feature for our customers. I've never really been able to tell the difference in sales volumes or traffic to our site.
This year we got the usual call that prices were going us yada yada yada to the tune of
5X the rate we paid last year
.
Normally I can talk with them and get the pricing greatly reduced, but this time the man that called was quite persistent and put his "manager" on the phone. When I explained to him that the company at this time did not have the means to be able to pay that much at which he offered a 5% discount. That was still too much for me to go to my boss and get an authorization for.
After that his tone changed and he started tell me about how many companies within a month or so of dropping their service got HACKED, rankings went way down, bounce rate sky rocketed and cart abandonment went through the roof.
This struck me as a serious veiled threat! I just wont do business like that and have warned our hosting provider of the potential threat.
I don't do Mafia style tactics very well.
I should also note that since my conversation with them if you click on the McAfee secure verification on our site it now comes up in French. We're in the US.
