Seven ways to not get help with CCleaner

[Rillion]

I had an issue with my upgrade to Professional (as in, it didn’t happen, apparently because there was no button where there should be a button). So that’s the problem.

Herein I present to you the steps of the nightmare quest I took to solve it:

1. Naturally, I first went to the CCleaner’s contact page to report what looks like a bug, but there was no way to do so. I didn’t even see an email address. Right now, at least, clicking Help & Support takes you to the support page, but if you click your OS (Windows, for me), it just reloads the same web page again.

2. So I went back to the application and clicked to get help from there. I got a message saying “Attention: Cleverbridge does not offer technical support for any products. For any content or technical-related questions, please contact Piriform Software Ltd. directly.” When I clicked “For all other inquiries, feel free to contact Cleverbridge Customer Support.”

   But I hadn’t purchased the product yet (because I couldn’t-- that’s the problem) so I couldn’t look up my order number on that screen.

   However, under “Payment and Order Related Support” it says if you’re missing your confirmation email with the license key, you can still look up your order on the Purchase Lookup page. Excellent! A solution to my problem, finally!

3. But it was not to be. When I clicked the link, I got half a web page.

4. I clicked the Next button, and got another half, containing the words “download link,” “You used for your purchase,” and “under that email address.” Didn’t look good.

5. So I went back to the Submit a Request" screen and clicked the “helpful FAQ article” link, and got this-- a message telling me to contact “Our partners” for basically any support need. “Enter the name of the company you ordered from here.” Umm…the company I ordered from, or tried to order from, was Cleverbridge. But I was on Cleverbridge’s help screen, being told to go to some other, unknown company.

   “If you can’t find the company you ordered from,” the window says, “please check the confirmation email we sent you when your payment was processed.” But my payment— again-- wasn’t processed, so I didn’t receive that email.

6. So I clicked to open the forum, which I started an account specifically to visit, because I was not given any prompt to create an account when I tried to purchase the product, and-- did I mention this?-- failed to do so.

7. The forum landing page lists categories beginning with CCleaner for Windows, so I clicked that, and found four different fora concerning support issues. So I picked the most general one, because I don’t know what the problem actually is.

So now I find myself here, in a community forum, where there is no option to submit an actual request specifically to the appropriate support team (whether it’s Cleverbridge or “one of our partners”). All you can do is create a topic and hope that some fellow user can give you information that Cleverbridge doesn’t provide.

Considering that the information is “How do I actually give you money to purchase your product,” I find that surprising. But the little deep dive this morning into the disastrous hellscape that is CCleaner’s support UI has wasted enough time, and caused enough frustration, that I don’t think I wanna.

[nukecad]

Distilling from all that it appears to be the Cleverbridge site that was the start of your woes, begining with:

apparently because there was no button where there should be a button

That sounds to me like a browser issue.

Missing buttons (and other things) when there should be one there seems to be becoming a ‘thing’, I’m seeing it reported on many different sites recently.
Such missing buttons are usually caused by either:

1. Your Adblocker seeing the button as an advert, and so blocking it from appearing.
2. You browsers ‘Strict’ security setting seeing the button as an advert or a ‘tracker’, and so blocking it from appearing.

It happens because of the way the webpage has been coded, the blocker/security can’t tell if it’s an advert or not and so just blocks it anyway.
To me they should not be doing that, particularly when it’s causing users to have problems.

Browsers do usually warn you about the Strict security setting, eg. this is Firefox:

The usual solution is to pause all your adblockers for that affected site, and/or change your browser security setting from Strict to Standard.
Alternatively try a different browser that doesn’t have such strict security and blocking set.

These days if I come across a webpage that I know or suspect has something not showing which should be there then I take a look at it in a different browser with no add-ons and with standard security set.

Just to add that the contact form for CCleaner support can be found here: CCleaner Support Community
If you use that form you will be given a ticket number - make a note of it.
You will then get an automated email reply with some general information (which will probably not interest you).
Your support ticket is now in the queue to get to a person.

You can also email support@ccleaner.com

Support are being very, very, (often you can add another very) slow to reply these days - even more so if you haven’t yet purchased a licence so haven’t paid for support.