Digital River

My subscription renewal is coming up, but I wanted to renew it early rather than waiting until the last minute. When I tried to buy another year, it said that they couldn’t bill me, so I got in touch with an agent via chat. He eventually sent me a Digital River link to buy the subscription.

I did a little research and found out that Digital River has an 89% one-star review rating, and that sent up a lot of red flags. Is going through Digital River really the only way to renew my subscription? And if it is, why are so many people saying it’s a scam?

Whatever you do don’t do it too soon or you are effectively paying twice, possibly worst leave it too late and the autorenew will kick in.

I have never used Digital River, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but in the time that I have been on the Avast Forum as a voluntary helper.
To my recollection I haven’t seen much related to Digital River. Presumably you are able to go into your Digital River account and change your option not to Autorenew ?
The renewal reminder from Digital River I guess should also give the option to cancel as this is a pretty standard requirement I would have thought.

As I said I use Avast Antivirus free version, but were I to be using a paid version of Avast I would follow this advice, I have never setup a renewable mandate for software, I prefer to manage that myself. Be assured the program will remind (nag) you when your subscription renewal is close, you may even get a discount offer to renew.

I did purchase two lifetime licenses for software in the past one is still going strong the other (for a firewall) ceased trading, but I still feel I got a good deal having used it for many years.

I use Avast Premium Security. My subscription doesn’t expire until the beginning of November, but I have autorenew on, which should warn me a couple of weeks before it expires.

I just don’t understand the almost exclusive one-star ratings from Digital River, and I don’t know if I want to risk the same thing happening to me.

First I don’t work for Avast and use Avast Antivirus free version. What Avast Product are you using ?

In essence buying from Digital River or from any other company, you wouldn’t be renewing your subscription (from its expiry date), but buying a new one starting on the date of purchase. So care needs to be taken not to lose the time remaining on your existing license. Digital River has been used by Avast for many years, usually on auto renewal mandates).

Let your current subscription get a little closer to its expiry (not to close), how long left ?

Do you have an auto renewal mandate set up where the subscription would be automatically update (and payment actioned) ?

To clarify the situation and correct DavidR’s statement, I’ve been renewing premium security for about ten years now.

Is going through Digital River really the only way to renew my subscription?

yes I think, this is the avast regular way.
Every time, the billing comes from Digital River when you use your avast account or the avast store, and they’re the main (only?) partner if you use avast, at least for European users.

nb: more than 10 years ago, I used to go through Nexway, but it was dealt with separately on the Nexway site.

With Digital River, I’ve never used their site, but it’s handled directly in our avast account.The order number that avast asks for in all contacts is even indicated on the Digital River invoice.
DR

I’ve never had any problems with my payments.

I think what makes the bad reviews on Digital River is that they charge for third-party products that use auto-renewals like avast, and people forget to disable these in the product account (here avast account) and get the impression of a scam when they end up with a Digital River charge they don’t know about.

As far as the purchase date is concerned, which according to DavidR is the starting date for using the product, this is generally not the case.

If the e-mail addresses of the initial purchase and the renewal are the same, avast proceeds with continuity, one-year extension on expiry of the previous one and not 2 subscriptions at the same time, I speak from experience.

However, if this is not the case (change of e-mail address in the meantime), you can contact avast support, who will merge the 2 subscriptions

This is what just happened to me, my previous subscription (automatically deactivated) expires on October 26, I accepted an interesting offer on October 12 using another email address (paypal), avast via CHAT merged the 2 and the expiration is now October 29 (I even gained 3 days). :wink: