whether avast collects directly or through another party whom they choose to use is obviously irrelevant to my point. the point, since it seems to have escaped you, is that refunds should be processed in a fast and convenient for the customer manner. what i have experienced is neither.
a general criterion is that refund process should be about as quick and simple for the customer as the payment. and a practical measure of how fast and how convenient it should be vs. how it actually is, is reflected by multiple complaints that are posted by customers on this subject. the fact that a different entity processes the payment and the refund is not a good thing in this regard.
1]
I agree. There are still way too much problems with it.
then they should not be offering it for sale to the public. have you been advising potential customers not to purchase it or existing customers to uninstall it and get a refund?
2]
You could have done a little research. It is mentioned in many places.
what places? shouldn't have to. products of this type generally do not possess your machine at boot time by default (e.g., avast AV boot scan will not happen w/o user intervention, etc). important info like that should be communicated prominently to the customer when he gets the popup ad that this is how the grimefighter software functions. given that most customers are surprised by this it is the vendor's fault for not revealing enough about the software to the (potential) customer.
3]
It tells you after it is finished and you can undo things.
well, it just locked up my machine and never finished so i don't know what it does after it's finished. anyway, that's backwards. the items should be listed once identified so i can make decision BEFORE the software disables them.
4]
That is how the business model works.
thanks for this tautological comment.
that’s how this business model works. it doesn’t have to be this way. i was posting my feedback to explain why this business model is not a good one for the customer and therefore for the vendor because the complaints will tarnish their reputation.
5]
That is not avast, it is a third party.
no. it was avast. as i said, i contacted avast after i was directed to do so by digitalriver. please pay attention.
6]
If you submitted the ticket with the 30 days, you will get a refund.
Just have patience and do not create another ticket or change the current one or you would get back at the bottom of the stack.
10 days -- or in other posts you indicate up to 2 weeks, so i don't know which one -- is excessive wait to get a refund.
7]
If money is out of your account, it doesn't mean avast/digital river has received it.
It has to go between banks and there can be a delay.
that is highly unlikely on general considerations -- since it was funded by paypal cash balance in my paypal account the money is transferred to the destination paypal account instantly. 2nd, in this particular case digital river confirmed on the phone that the payment had in fact been received, they just refused to refund it. the subsequent email i received after submitting the ticket was contradictory to the fact that the payment was in fact received.
in case it is not obvious why such an email makes a customer nervous: an email that erroneously says the payment has not been received implies that it cannot be refunded. so the customer is confused whether to just wait and hope that a refund is still coming despite the contradictory email, or to delay the refund by replying and thereby pushing back the response to the refund request ticket. this is poor, disorganized customer service.
8]
It doesn't have to be avast that slowed down things.
Could also be leftovers from a previous av or other security software.
it can't because no other AV was ever installed on this OS. btw, avast AV would not uninstall properly either and froze at the end, i had to download and use the avast uninstaller tool in safe mode.