Digital River powers Symantec's online retail store, ShopSymantec, and is responsible for support relating to the purchase and downloading of Symantec's software products. According to Todd Frostad, senior director of business development at Digital River, the recent problems stem from the switch of customer services between the two companies. We are aware of the issues, and Digital River is very much on top of them. They said they've seen a drop-off in the number of calls in the last few days. Frostad says the problems that led to the onslaught of customer criticism at Symantec's online help site had less to do with people not being able to download the software and more to do with the fact they are unable to get the help they need.
People always have problems downloading software.
Since then, the wait times have dropped to between 10 and 12 minutes, which is still unacceptable, he says. Digital River's Frostad says the service disruption is not server related, and he adds that the company hasn't encountered any server problems since the transition. But William Malik, an analyst at Gartner Group , says he is reluctant to blame the user population in general for the problems they experienced downloading Symantec's software. He says he believes there was a spike in demand that caused Digital River's server to slow down or fail. You don't normally experience that amount of disruption in service.