I had a warning message from Avast Premium, the firewall wouldn’t start (Win 7 OS PC). After few trials I contacted Avast telephone support service provided from a foreign location (India?) I was reluctant but finally accepted to download an exe file and granted him the remote control of my PC for inspection and service. He started to look at different things and files on my PC, checked for the presence of another AV software, virus … He slowly prepared me to the fact that my PC would require a register (made of one and zeroes) (;o)) fix that plagged operation of my PC and shut down the firewall. A tech service fees that would cost me $179 but would fix my PC and enable normal operation of the firewall… It smelled scam a mile around, I declined and reset the PC.
Guess what? I fixed it myself withing minutes after loosing faith in this service. I simply used a freeware (CCleaner) to clean the registers and selected the software repair facility on Avast Premium and then rebooted.
Sometime later I Googled “Avast firewall repair scam” and found that the same scam was taking place thing was happening in 2012 through IYogi service.
Shame on you for taking your customers for suckers… You’ll loose me as customer if you don’t change this behaviour.
I will also make formal complaints to internet regulatory agency and software boards. There are class actions for this way of acting.