From
Which? News, Anti-virus upgrade offers short-changing customers (http://www.which.co.uk/news/2010/12/anti-virus-upgrade-offers-short-changing-customers-237375/):
QuoteConsumers who upgrade their anti-virus protection via discounted offers by Symantec and AVG are in danger of being short-changed, a Which? Computing (http://www.which.co.uk/publications/magazines/which-computing/) investigation into security software charging problems has found.
Discounted offers are sent via emails or appear as pop-up alerts to a user's PC urging them to upgrade their existing anti-virus protection to a more powerful version - usually at a reduced price.
But Which? Computing has heard from several customers who claim that by signing up to these offers they lost months off of their existing anti-virus subscription. Following the complaints, we decided to investigate the upgrade policies of several anti-virus software makers.
PC Pro provides AVG and Symantec responses in their updated copy of the
Which? News report in Updated: Antivirus firms "short-changing" customers (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/363322/updated-antivirus-firms-short-changing-customers):
Symantec Response:
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Symantec said the Which? report is misleading, as its customers won't lose any subscription time when they renew their current product or download a new version of the product.
"If a customer chooses to renew an existing product subscription, the renewal period is added to the time remaining on the customer's existing subscription," a spokesperson said.
Upgrading to a different product will restart the subscription time, but Symantec stresses it warns customers first. "If a customer chooses to purchase an upgrade product offering additional security features and more comprehensive protection, the new upgrade subscription will begin when installed and activated, and time remaining from the customer's previous product subscription is not added to the new upgrade product subscription."
Dan Nadir, senior director of consumer products at Symantec, added: "In some cases we make discounted offers to our users for different products. If the user says they would like to move to a different product, we give them a discount and we clearly tell them that this is a different product with a new subscription. You don't lose your existing subscription: if, for example, you have two months left, you can still use those months, for example by putting that product on a different PC."
AVG Response:
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Tony Anscombe, a spokesperson for at AVG, said the Which? article was incorrect. "The article is inaccurate — I can categorically state that it's wrong," he told PC Pro. If you have a licence that expires on 15 December, and you renew it today, your new licence will run to 15 December 2011. We have a team here working to get the article corrected, with documentary evidence, so we can show that what's been reported is not the case."
I can confirm that the Symantec answer is true and seems fair to me. I upgraded fro NIS 2010 to NIS 2011 for free and kept my existing subscription to defs updates.
However, changing from basic AV only to a discounted NIS 2011 you would lose any outstanding defs subscription. All seems very fair to me
Thanks for the confirmation, Mike.