Norton removal tools expires

Why do Symantec create a Norton removal tool to remove their incredibly poor software from your machine and then have so that is expires before you can use it.
We have previously added blogs to this page castigating Norton for poor product quality. The last time was to complain that a product that you might use to prevent problems such as Denial of Service (DOS) attacks behaves to deny you your service when the product expires.
So we had a machine in recently that had an old version of Norton on it. We could not remove this using Add/remove programs.
So went to download the removal tool. We had a copy on our server but this failed to run because it reported it had expired. So now the Norton website lists a number of removal tools depending on what was initially installed. Now I don't know what was installed because I cannot run it to find out. Second I am not interested in finding out what was installed I simply want to get rid of it.
I downloaded what looked like the most suitable version but when I ran it it reported that it had expired. I am not going to download the other 9 or 10 variants on NRT just in the off chance one might work.
This is the only product I know where the developer has had to write a special removal tool and even that does not work.
In the end I went through Registry Editor to remove keys that related to Symanec and Norton (well not all because you do have to be a bit careful), then I deleted all the files of the relavant "c:\program files" and "c:\program files\common files" to get rid of the product.
This too is an exercise in how not to do something. The dirt that is left in registry everytime Norton does a live update beggars belief.
What has happened to the company who once had what was arguably the best AV product who now produces what is arguably one of the worst?

Expired Norton stops Internet access

Two machines have been brought into us recently with DNS errors on accessing Internet pages. In both cases these machines had an out of date version of Norton Antivirus / Internet Security installed. In both cases once Norton was removed Internet access was restored.
The problem is that you cannot always uninstall Norton after it has expired. This means that you have to use the Norton Removal Tool (or for the brave you can edit the Windows registry directly) but without Internet access you cannot download the Norton Removal Tool.
You can of course download the NRT to another machine, copy the files onto a memory stick or CD and then copy it to the target machine and run it. Remember to reinstall some AntiVirus software once you have deleted Norton. We recommend Panda Internet Security products.
To occupy the high moral ground I have to say that for a company such as Symantec with a product such as Norton AV to exhibit this behaviour simply because the license has expired is really unacceptable.