I pay for the vpn service, but have always used the Avast Free AV side of things, for around 9 years roughly. A reminder appeared saying the AFA was expiring and now expired and needs renewed (thought it was up to date as I’d just renewed my vpn in Feb.). When I click the reactivate, it brings up a familiar ui where you either “select” AFA or AIS. Upon selecting the AFA option, it instead changes to “Try Avast Internet Security for 60 days - 100% free” with “Start Free Trial” button below. Clicking “No thanks” in the tiny print below that, which should put me into the Avast Free option, instead just closes the UI out and cancels the renewal? Seriously? It’s also locked to an “Upgrade Now” button in Avast vs. “Reactivate”.
It’s bad enough Chrome gets bundled in w/ default browser option as a sneaky attempt average users might miss by not unselecting check-boxes, but forcing me into a 60 day trial of Avast Internet when all I want is the Avast Free option, is rather underhanded if it’s intentional. Is this a bug or what? Why can’t I renew my actual Avast Free 365 day license? Why is it trying to force me into a free trial of a paid service I don’t want? Is it going to find a bunch of goofy things that are supposedly slowing my PC down? And I’ll be so grateful of the service I’ll throw money at it?
It would be a non-issue if the trial was advertised as an OPTIONAL “bonus trial” or a “reward” where it’d either auto-revert to the AFA license after 60 days or was attached to the AFA license, or I had the option to just ignore it completely. But selecting one service and being railroaded into another one, completely bypassing the option of the intended service, is extremely disingenuous, especially coming from an AV service. If the average user isn’t paying attention to the wording of the different products, I suspect they have no idea they are being covertly mislead into another service, which I’m sure at the end of 60 days will end up with a “buy now” button or lose your AV… There are independent freeware sites with more transparency and upfront trustworthiness… if we can’t trust Avast to do the right thing and not be focused solely on subs, can we actually trust Avast?