Got charged by DRI*Avast Software even though I did not oder anything

system · 2016-04-01T23:27:59.000Z

This topic is old, but I found it when I was searching for other people who have had the same thing happen to them. I downloaded the Avast Free Antivirus one year ago, and just received an email receipt from Avast letting me know that my subscription has been renewed and they are charging me $43.19. I checked the invoice and it says I have Internet Security. I did not download the internet security option, only the free antivirus. I never gave Avast my bank account information, so I don’t know how they could have gotten it to charge me for this. I submitted a ticket and will get a refund, but I just wanted people to know this also happened to me.

bob3160 · 2016-04-02T00:32:10.000Z

Reported to Avast.

system · 2016-04-03T23:41:57.000Z

Great Day Friends,

after reading the information here and taking action, I received a message of halting the auto renewal of avast security. I am still confused of how we went from free to otherwise but have to admit to not remembering the full policy of software usage. Either way, avast responded quickly and I am left to decide what internet security software to buy. LOL Truly, in the end I will buy software. I’m still amazed, however, at my bank account being charged. With that in mind, I think I may return to purchasing said software on CD and preventing exchange of sensitive information.

Altogether, I only wanted to note avast’s willingness to respond and clear up the described issue.

Eddy · 2016-04-04T06:57:19.000Z

The only way I can think of how avast got the bank account/credit card number is that if a person had bought a paid product in the past or has used a trial of a paid product.
It can be someone in the same household that did so.

system · 2016-04-22T09:06:12.000Z

Well I just received my Mastercard statement with one of these charges, in this case GBP14.99, for which I have no recollection of ordering. I have been using Avast free on my pc for years without such a problem, and on my mobiles for two or three years.

I went to the Digital River link supplied here and found a special place to enquire about such charges:
https://www.findmyorder.com/sstore?Action=DisplayHomePage&SiteID=findmyor&Locale=en_US

It is described as follows:
…
Important

If you have a charge on your recent billing statement with a description such as, “DRI*” “DRI” or “Digital River” and do not recognize this charge, please look up your order using your email address and last 5 digits of your credit card.

If you are unable to find your order using your email address and last 5 digits of your credit card, please look up your order using your order number and password. Forgot your password? Click here.
…

Unfortunately the first option did not come up with a response and the second was not applicable since I did not have an order number or password. But this is obviously a problem affecting many people recognised by DR sufficiently for them to have this special page on their site.

I passed the message to their CS department through their Contact system and am awaiting their response.

I’ll post it when received.

moroni · 2016-04-22T15:25:11.000Z

Hi edmoore,

I couldn’t find any subscription registered under your email address indeed.
As we would need some personal details in order to find the transaction, could you please open a ticket here https://support.avast.com/support/tickets/new?form=1 ?
I’ll contact you once you there

system · 2016-05-13T12:12:23.000Z

Sorry, Moroni, I didn’t read your response. However I did get a response from the CS department who initially couldn’t find the transaction but after I sent them a scan of the statement responded immediately with this:

quote
We’ve checked our system using the information provided in your attached billing statement and show that the charge of GBP14.99 on March 25, 2016 is for Order Number 15783849462 for the purchase of Avast Cleanup - 1
PC, 1 Year.
If this was an unauthorized charge of your account, please reply to let us know and we will initiate a refund.
unquote

I’m not sure why they want me again to tell them that this was an unauthorized charge but I have and they presumably will cancel it. My big concern is WHERE DID THEY GET MY CARD DETAILS?

I only noticed this charge by accident and I can imagine that the proportion of people who would ignore a small charge like this would be high. That means that Avast could be holding a lot of cash to which they are not entitled. Is anyone investigating this?

moroni · 2016-05-13T13:10:19.000Z

edmoore post:42:

I only noticed this charge by accident and I can imagine that the proportion of people who would ignore a small charge like this would be high. That means that Avast could be holding a lot of cash to which they are not entitled. Is anyone investigating this?

Nope. It means that somebody got access to your credit card details and make an order using it.
Are you sure you don’t recognize the details of the person who purchased this order?

system · 2016-05-13T19:55:09.000Z

Well, Moroni, that’s an interesting suggestion but, to me, seems far-fetched. Someone obtains the details of my credit card and then profits by buying an Avast product for less than $20? Sorry, don’t buy that.

Also do not have any details of the “person” that made the charge, only of the account that charged me, i.e. Dri Avast.

moroni · 2016-05-14T10:23:55.000Z

edmoore post:44:

Well, Moroni, that’s an interesting suggestion but, to me, seems far-fetched. Someone obtains the details of my credit card and then profits by buying an Avast product for less than $20? Sorry, don’t buy that.

Also do not have any details of the “person” that made the charge, only of the account that charged me, i.e. Dri Avast.

Marianne T_____
Voula, GR

marianne.t_____@gmail.com

system · 2016-05-14T11:02:26.000Z

Great. Finally I get details of the person who made the order on my card. It’s my wife!

Too bad that my earlier enquiries did not mention this.

Sorry for not knowing but this could have been settled with my first request.

All the best

Ed

moroni · 2016-05-14T11:06:55.000Z

Glad that we finally figured this out

For the records, you only contacted our distributor (Digital River) and not us (Avast Software) using the link I posted before. Anyhow, I checked that your refund is being processed.

Cheers!

Eddy · 2016-05-14T12:50:33.000Z

Keep avast, replace the wife ;D

Asyn · 2016-05-14T14:36:28.000Z

Eddy post:48:

Keep avast, replace the wife ;D

;D 8)

system · 2016-11-03T15:04:11.000Z

Got charged $109US out of the blue. Never heard of this company. never had dealings directly or indirectly. My Canadian cc company called them a FRAUD. Said they had heard about them. Check your credit card statement diligently. They may appear out of the blue. Avast reimbursed my account they next day, however, with the buying and selling US $s I lost a bit on exchange. That ain’t the point…where do they come off debiting my cc account!!!
Watch them …they appear as DRI AVAST on your statement

Eddy · 2016-11-03T15:36:39.000Z

Your Canadian CC company is very wrong.
DRI AVAST means the product/subscription is from avast and Digital River handles the payment.
If your CC company is calling them a fraud, it is time to dump that CC company as they clearly have no clue what they are talking about.

Digital River is a fully legitimate payment processing company that handles financial transactions for a lot of other companies.
Some of their clients (not limited to) :

avast
Kaspersky
Adobe
HTC
Bosch
Vistaprint
Logitech
Microsoft

You might not recall it, but it is very likely the payment processor that you have used when buying a subscription for one or more avast products.
What (almost certainly) happened is that auto-renewal took place because you did not disabled it.
As has been explained numerous of times on this webboard, before the auto-renewal takes place you receive 3(!) mails from avast telling you about it and giving you enough time to disable/stop the auto-renewal.
If you don’t do so, it will take place and you will get charged.

bob3160 · 2016-11-03T19:55:49.000Z

Lance26 post:50:

Got charged $109US out of the blue. Never heard of this company. never had dealings directly or indirectly. My Canadian cc company called them a FRAUD. Said they had heard about them. Check your credit card statement diligently. They may appear out of the blue. Avast reimbursed my account they next day, however, with the buying and selling US $s I lost a bit on exchange. That ain’t the point…where do they come off debiting my cc account? ??? ??? !!!
Watch them …they appear as DRI AVAST on your statement

Maybe you’ve heard of Digital River ???
https://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB24
Sounds like your auto renewal kicked in.
If it’s been less than trial period, you can still cancell:
https://support.avast.com/support/tickets/new?form=2

moroni · 2016-11-04T13:58:07.000Z

Lance26 post:50:

Got charged $109US out of the blue. Never heard of this company. never had dealings directly or indirectly. My Canadian cc company called them a FRAUD. Said they had heard about them. Check your credit card statement diligently. They may appear out of the blue. Avast reimbursed my account they next day, however, with the buying and selling US $s I lost a bit on exchange. That ain’t the point…where do they come off debiting my cc account!!!
Watch them …they appear as DRI AVAST on your statement

Hi Lance26,

Could you please send us the details about this to https://support.avast.com/support/tickets/new?form=1
We will investigate it

system · 2016-11-08T13:27:23.000Z

I had 4 separate rapid-fire charges from DRI for $59.99 on my CC last night at about 1:00 am EST. Thankfully they were all denied by my CC company because of suspected unauthorized activity. This morning I had to confirm that they were indeed unauthorized and my CC company cancelled my card and is sending a new one.

I have no idea how Avast or DRI got my CC info. While I’ve used the free version of Avast for years, I never remember giving them my info, especially with this card that is less than a year old. This is very unfortunate because I truly love Avast, but what the heck man? Anyway, I Googled to see if other people were experiencing a similar problem and sure enough I found this thread. So I thought I’d come and share my unfortunate experience.

Eddy · 2016-11-08T13:33:31.000Z

Only way to know your creditcard details is if you have provided them or if your creditcard account is/was compromised (and perhaps even abused).

It can be you had a trial once and provided the details at that time.

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