Money taken from my bank account without permission

Let me start by saying that over the past few years I have used and been a big fan of Avast free anti-virus, but my faith has been shattered by what is either shady practice or gross incompetence.

On 5th December 2018 I signed up for two 60-day trials…for Avast Internet Security & for Avast SecureLine VPN. Prior to the 60-day period expiring I opted not to auto-renew. So far, so good.

I have just received my bank statement for February, only to find that on 6th February Avast took £39.99 from my account! This it appears is for Avast CleanUp. But here’s the problem… I never signed up for a trial of Avast CleanUp. I’ve never received any notification the I was signed up to Avast CleanUp for a trial or otherwise, and consequently I have never received an option to cancel that non-existent trial!

The first I knew about Avast CleanUp was when Avast took that money from my account. I don’t know if I am the only example of something like this happening to…perhaps people can let me know.

I really hope that this was a genuine mistake and not something more sinister. I’m posting here in the hope that someone from Avast can address this & also to raise awareness of this issue to others in the hope that it won’t happen to anyone else.

https://support.avast.com/article/24/ (Orders/Renewals/Refunds)

Hi paul.r,

I have sent you a message about the situation now - as it includes some personal information, I can’t post a reply publicly.

Thank you for the message, and thanks for sorting out the issue so swiftly. Much appreciated.

I just want Avast to give me back my money as I have not agreed to automatically pay for anything in my life. I don’t have nor have I had the paid subscription on my computer for quite a few years. I don’t like that I can not speak to a representative of the company about this problem so I am going to tell my bank to reverse the charges if possible and never allow Avast to automatically deduct any payments from my bank account for a product I have not actually had in years. I didn’t even get an email to tell me about the charges to my account.

Follow this advice: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=225695.msg1496797#msg1496797