Tell Us Your Story

If you’ve experienced problems with Avast Software as described on this site, feel free to tell us and everyone else about it here.

233 thoughts on “Tell Us Your Story

  1. I had free AVAST antivirus software, but now when I log in it brings up a screen asking me to buy one of its products. I can’t delete the app in task manager..
    The only way with Windows 10 was to stop AVAST is the startup menu of the control panel.

  2. I don’t usually leave comments like this on the net…. but I had £59.99 taken from my account without warning from Avast.I wasn’t ever notified about an auto renewal. What an awful thing to do to customers. I reported this to paypal and paypal confirmed it was an unauthorised transaction. I also messaged Avast for a refund but paypal got the money back straight away and confirmed it was unauthorised. Avast… piss poor form… Only had bad customer service from them in the past too. Don’t ever ******* bother with them.

    • Just happened to me for £49.99. I contacted them and had the money returned immediately. Now I am worried that they are able to take money and how to get them to delete my details. They will probably sell it on. They should be fined and shut down.

      • Hey, same for me but they’ve declined my refund because it’s over 30 days. I’m appealing to PayPal based on comments here. The ironic thing is, I haven’t even been using the software. I’m unprotected and they’ve taken the money with no notification or even email to say it was taken at all!

  3. I keep getting pop ups from AVG telling me my drivers are out of date and asking for money to update them. However, according to Windows Updater and the manufacturers, the drivers are all up to date and functioning. This is a serious case of fraud. Everything seemed to be legit until a couple of years when Avast bought AVG. Now, the company is a scareware scam operation.

  4. Today, Avast threw up two errors on my desktop. I tried running a program and Avast didn’t like it and forced it into the virus chest, but this time wouldn’t let me whitelist it for some odd reason. Still, I looked to Avast whom I got a amazing discount on my first license and had high hopes they knew what they were doing. So being the kind of car guy that worships Chrysler for a living, (wait, who worships Chrysler again?) I clicked through some help pages and found the “premium support” number. (also yeah sorry I’m American, our cars suck, I know it’s a joke.)

    When I called “premium” customer service, I was greeted by the average call center bot asking for what kind of help I needed, then after I put in my selection I had to wait with absolutely no music whatsoever. Then someone came on, he seemed like a nice, relatable guy at first. During our call I mentioned things like Videogames and Steam, and he instantly asked if I played Dota 2 only for me to say no. I had a great feeling, a nice company, with nice people, pushing products that never worked. What could go wrong? So I’m on the phone with him for 30 minutes so far, and then he suddenly puts me on hold saying “Hang on my technical supervisor is here.” I thought “Horray!” a guy is going to click once and everything is going to be better. And guess what? He did just that! He clicked “extract” and suddenly the program was on my desktop with some weird files. Avast was still buggy as hell but I could use my program now. Then we all lived happily ever after! 🙂

    Yes well I don’t think some of you have even tried their support, it is American after all, but bare with me. I was asked to pay up $80 dollars (USD, again American,) for that single click. I started sweating as the man circled my options in yellow highlight, trying to sell me what was 100% a scam. Basically they were trying to sucker up $200, but what’s funny is that I only sent my first job application six months ago. So no, this scammer isn’t getting my money. I felt whimpy afterwards because I told him he was probably just another Indian scammer, he retorted that it was me that actually called him. Deep down my anger boiled and I politely reminded him they promised free diagnostics. That was my second line of defense, “Can I please just not be scammed right now?” But annoyingly he insisted this was costly because it “wasn’t a problem caused by Avast,” then I nearly lost it, a hour over “a issue about Avast only it isn’t.” The nerd I knew changed that very instant. He said I had to pay the $200 for “the best deal,” when I obviously would refuse he broke into threats like “this is being recorded,” or “I am right,” and ofcourse the “I explained this many times,” but no, you hid the fact this was just a scam. They lured me intentionally with “free diagnostics” and only to 180 with dumb reasoning like “oh you install PROGRAMS on your computer? No, that’s a THIRD PARTY issue!” Oh so you want me to use a anti-virus that never will stop a virus because there’s zero programs. Sounds legit. (I hope legit is something Brits say.)

    But yeah basically we were at each others throats right now, I was worried Avast was going to cut my service over a dumb charge I didn’t want to pay. (which is why I stayed with the scammers. Lesson learned btw, there’s no consequences to run from harassment,) Looking back after scratching my head for hours and now I’m laughing my head off. Basically at the end I give them a reference number and they said BS like “oh yeah we already have it!” And legitimately shocked I said, “Look, he told me this was free!” Basically for some stupid reason I called the wrong department and they told me to call the other guys for “free diagnostics,” which obviously is even more BS. Not one of them spoke good English (not very British are they?) or even knew how to turn on the waiting music. It only came on once when I was put on hold, and that’s when I started laughing into tears. I was put on hold many times and the situation was pretty unprofessional and stupid at best.

    They intimidated me for money, I demanded free service, click.

    Here’s the “premium” fees for calling them, note how the $200 option is recurring. 🙂

  5. Avast snuck onto my computer 2 days ago, and I have no idea how it did it. It also gave itself higher permissions than exist making itself so far impossible to delete/uninstall/quarantine/rename/move. Avast is a virus that looks like I will have to do a full wipe of my hard drive and reformat to get rid of.

  6. Hi All,

    I would like to post this again just to let you know….

    If those bastards refused to refund your money send an email to their managers. Start from the top. Their salaries are being collected from all of us. You can find their names here: https://www.avast.com/en-us/about

    The company is using (last name)@avast.com (e.g. Vincent Steckler the big thief’s email address is: steckler@avast.com, Ondrej Vlcek next one email address is: vlcek@avast.com and so on..)

    Do not let thieves to enjoy your money.

  7. I shall start off by confessing to being an extremely uneducated Internet user. That having been said, I’m very keen to keep my computer safe and running efficiently. When I was looking at my bank statement today, I saw two items credited to Avast within a month and for different amounts. The bank told me that these were debit card payments which they could cancel and/or refer to their anti-fraud department. I said I would try to clarify with Avast. When I logged into their site I found the following annual subscriptions: Avast Premier (x1); Avast Secure Line for PCs (x2) !!; Avast Clean Up (x1); Avast Passwords (x1). These are being renewed automatically. I realise that I have the opportunity through their site to cancel these, but surely all this apparent “product differentiation” amounts to sharp practice?? I don’t really know which of these I need and which I don’t. I don’t mind paying for one software program, but this multiplicity is (to me) deliberately confusing. They know that I am making a duplicate payment for Secure Line, for example, but they don’t have the decency to let me know. I would like to zap the whole lot and subscribe to another outfit altogether. Shameful!

  8. My account was just charged 399 DKK (about 59 USD) and it said DRI Avast Software. I have never bought anything or any service from Avast. Searching my gmail, I found no correspondance with Avast, and certainly no order confirmation or invoice from Avast.
    Rather scary I must say. I now after googling I can see that quite a few people have experiences exactly the same thing.
    I have now filed a complaint. I certainly hope to get my money back.

  9. I told Avast to cancel my membership over a month ago and they still tried to charge my credit card. Finally I got an email saying they cancelled my account yesterday lol

  10. Avast(Digital River) has ripped me off and won’t refund my money $52.99 and PayPal won’t help either. I never even ordered their product but was charged anyway.
    They’ve been playing email tag for 8 months now and say my time is up for a refund. It wasn’t up when I first contacted them. Bunch of CROOKS and CHEATS.
    They should be sued and then sent to prison for FRAUD.

  11. Just happened to me today. I haven’t used avast for 3 years. There was no way through Avast or Digital River to rectify the situation. My credit card company is canceling the charge and sending me a new card/acct. Said they would be investigating. I hope so.

  12. avast are getting on my tits I have security pc clean up and vpn I was going to for ultimate bundle but iff they don’t stop coming onto me to buy more products I will shut them out alltogether had enough just do as you said look after my pc with what I have or you should not be selling products in the first place

  13. Avast@digitalriver.com tried to renew my avast account even though my license has not expired. The prices were over $500 per year. What? I signed into Avast and checked my license. digitalriver could not charge my card as I had cancelled it. This happened to me last year and I disputed the charge. I am rethinking Avast if they are partnered with this nefarious company.

  14. I noticed a charge of £19.99 for DRI AVAST Software on my credit card statement and I vaguely remember getting an alert that there was a problem on my computer and I obviously paid initially. However, I did not receive a confirmation e-mail with order number and so have not been able to cancel the auto-renewal. Worse, I called a number listed as Avast’s UK number and was asked by the person who answered the telephone to let him have access to my computer. Obviously I didn’t allow him access. As it is impossible for me to contact Avast to cancel I have cancelled my credit card and am awaiting a new one so they can’t continue to take this amount ad infinitum. Shocking.

  15. Purchased DRI Avast Software for MAC last year for 59.88 AUD. This year they charged 104.99! They have charged for a 5 device pack, when i purchased for one. Looks like they were hoping i would not notice.

    Have taken it up with PayPal

  16. I nah canceled and subscriptions and all my auto renewals a little over a year ago. Then in August I was billed 50$ some odd for an auto renewal. Soo I called and got it canceled and a refund and had them make sure it wouldn’t ever happen again. Then today I woke up with another 80$ charger for auto renewal. This time I didn’t get any kind of email for the change. Just my bank account stating I had been changed. I called to get a refund and they tell me their records indicate my account had been canceled in August and they didn’t have record of my most recent charge. After I long debate and my threatening to get a lawyer I was told they would either call me back tomorrow or I would get an email about my refund. Not sure what’s going on with avast, the time I did use it was great but I haven’t touched my computer in almost 2 years now. Not sure what I can do about them stealing my money, if they say they don’t ave record of me being charged.

  17. Avast browser is currently blocking my access to news sites I like to comment on. I confirmed this suspicion by testing it – 1) opening other browsers and checking the same sites, and also 2) checking at different locations.
    I call this abuse of access and an infringement on our freedom of speech

  18. avast charged my credit card without my aqutohrization,i called the bank and suspended my credit card.i e-mailed to avast that they are thieves but nothing more.so i had to close my all internet accounts.i uninstalled avast forever not to install again ever.

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