First off, i would like to apologise for this post being my reason to contribute initially to this forum.
I have been using Avast for the last three years and am overall very happy with the service provided. My first 2 renewals were done manually but for some reason when i paid the second subscription an auto renewal was set up. Now i’m not saying i was scammed as it could genuinely have been an oversight on my part, though i am very thorough when it comes to selecting products i wish to purchase. I do not remember choosing or even having the choice of wanting to automatically renew my subscription as it is something i never do. Loyal customers never get the best deals, as Sky and many mobile phone companies are testament to.
My subscription ( Avast Premier - 3 PC’s for 1 year ) is due to expire on the 13th September 2014. On the Saturday 9th August 2014 @ 09:02 a.m. i received an e-mail from avast@digitalriver.com to inform me that my subscription would expire in 30 days time but as i’d selected auto renewal it would renew on the 8th September. I looked at the charge and it was for £39.99. This comprised of an Original Price of £54.77 with a discount of £20.00 plus tax of which was £5.22p.
I was very happy with this and even though i was irked at the auto renewal situation, the price for another years protection made up for that.
Then on the Sunday 24th August 2014 at 07:21 a.m. later i received a second e-mail from avast@digitalriver.com notifying me of my impending subscription expiry in 15 days time. The e-mail was worded exactly the same as the previous e-mail, except for one glaring difference, the PRICE!!!
There was no discount this time around and the cost was £59.99. This comprised of the original price of £52.17p and £7.82p in tax.
So within the space of fifteen days the cost of the product had increased by 50%!!!
Now i’m not saying it’s a deliberate scam but let’s be honest here, how many people would have just skipped that second e-mail after having received the first one with the discount? I’d guess a lot of people would have and would have been ripped off without noticing until they got their bill or bank statement through.
All my account details and order numbers are identical in both e-mails so this is no clerical error. The e-mails are carbon copies of each other, bar the expiration days and the actual pricing of the product. On another day i’d have skipped that second e-mail, assuming the price to have been the same. Nobody would expect the price to increase after the initial discount was applied.
And if that discount had been removed for a reason then the very least i would have expected was an explanation as to why this was the case.
Needless to say, a quick ‘Google’ search brought up a great number of articles on the difficulty of cancelling the auto renewal service. Luckily i pay for Avast with Paypal so it wasn’t as hard as i expected but i also found the link to directly cancel with Avast as well which was a relief.
I must say that i am sorry i have to to do this as it is a great product, but once the trust is gone between the business and the consumer there is no other option.
I just thought i’d make people aware of this situation as i’d hate for somebody else to get caught out, luckily for me i didn’t. If i hadn’t thoroughly read that second e-mail though it could have been oh so different.
Have to say this is disgusting service, the product sells itself, yet greed for some is the ultimate motivator.