McAfee - taking unauthorised payments, help please!

Texas

Hoping someone can give me some advice please. I purchased McAfee internet security for £9.99 in February last year. Came home to an email on Monday advising they had renewed my subscription and debited my bank account with £49.99. I have never given them the authority to do this. As I wasn't expecting to have to pay this I do not have the funds and it has left me short for other direct debits that are due this week. The email advised to contact them if I wanted a refund which I did. I contated Customer Services who spent 15 minutes reading apologies and excuses from a script, offering me money off and requesting that I explain for the 10th time why I didn't want it, they then advised that they had not yet received the money so they couldn't refund it. My bank confirmed today that they would have received it, therefore I called back tonight to ask if the refund had been issued yet and once again they state they haven't received the funds yet. It is showing on my bank statement. McAfee have advised that it usually takes up to ten working days for them to issue a refund. My argument is that at no time was I advised that they were going to renew the subscription. I'm also livid that they can just use a debit card that they were given authority to use once last year. They explained that they did not think I would want my PC unprotected, even though it does not actually expire until 17th February. Does anyone know where I stand with this? As far as I'm concerned they have used my card without my permission but I don't know what I can do about it.

Many thanks for reading, sorry to ramble, I'm so angry!

LinasPilibaitisisbatman

It was almost certainly in their terms that it would auto renew and almost certainly you never bothered to read them.

soolin

McAfee do have a policy of auto renewals, I noticed it in the small print when I renewed approx 16 months ago.

After a year I when I had decided to go elsewhere for my PC protection I had to formally tell them I did not want to continue. I still get inundated with emails telling me my PC is at risk..but I ignore them as I am happy now with kaspersky at a tenth of the price.

Texas

I remember reading the terms but not seeing anything like this. I wouldn't have accepted it in the first place of I had. I work for an insurance company owned by a bank and we aren't allowed to retain any card details that our customers give us never mind use them again for 5 times the original value without notice. It all seems so underhand.

mariposa12

Nothing was mentioned about auto-renewal when I first bought the McAfee product. There is an auto-renewal option on their web site which they set to ON by default but they (deliberately I would think) do not inform anyone that it can also be set to OFF if one does not want to auto-renew.

However, there is absolutely no excuse for taking money from someone's account without permission - which is what they are doing. They are also taking the money in excess of one month before their product is due for renewal and without warning - how can that be right?

peter_the_piper

There is, of course, the simple solution and that is to cancel and get one of the great FREE antivirus and firewalls available. Check the Techie forum out.

AliceBanned

Sorry to hear this - I agree that it is underhand. Even though it is in the terms, I still think it's unfair that companies are allowed to operate like this - and very bad customer service. It is so obvious that yes there may be an agreement made but really they are taking money from your account by without your clear prior knowledge on the timing and on the amount. In my view this is not transparent enough.

balmk

...but notification of auto-renewal is in the T's&C's which you are required to confirm you have read before you can purchase the product. It also tells you that your subscription is set to auto-renew and how many days you have left on it when you open the McAfee dashboard and select to check your subscription status.

charlesworth82

balmk wrote: »

...but notification of auto-renewal is in the T's&C's which you are required to confirm you have read before you can purchase the product. It also tells you that your subscription is set to auto-renew and how many days you have left on it when you open the McAfee dashboard and select to check your subscription status.

yeah we all read the T's&C's on everything.......

vuvuzela

charlesworth82 wrote: »

yeah we all read the T's&C's on everything.......

If you don't then you lose the right to whinge and moan about anything in them
Surely only a halfwit doesn't read T&Cs when it comes to financial matters ?

Francesanne

This is one of the reasons I decided to leave McAfee. I got caught once by McAfee & then discovered you can turn the auto renewal off but thankfully it didn't send me into the red. Think most of us don't bother to read the small print until it's too late. I certainly won't get caught out when my Norton renewal comes up.