"We did add significant staff to our support lines to make sure we could handle the call volumes for year end and also the changes in process and upgrades," he said. "It does sound like some customers are experiencing some waits that are longer than normal. I can see how some customers would not be happy and we're addressing that head on."

But Symantec's problems don't appear to be limited to Veritas products.

John Halamka, CIO at Harvard Medical School and CareGroup Healthcare System in Boston, said Symantec forgot to send his office a license renewal reminder for his Brightmail Anti-Spam application. There was "a lapse in coverage of a few days that caused us to scramble."

Donald Springer, IS manager at A. J. Antunes & Co., in Carol Stream, Ill., said the quality of service support before Veritas' merger with Symantec was bad, and it hasn't improved much since the merger. Springer said he is looking to replace his Backup Exec software with another product because the upgrades he implemented since Version 9 have made it very unstable, causing conflicts with drivers and failed backups.

"My record time was three hours on hold waiting to talk to someone with regards to that software," he said. "We would love it if we could go back to the Veritas company that we used to deal with. We're actively looking for software solutions to eliminate this chronic irritant."