Consumeractive
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Why has McAfee charged me for a second antivirus?
Q I’ve been using McAfee antivirus on my PC, two laptops and a smartphone, paying £109.90 a year for protection across unlimited devices. Last June, I bought another laptop, which had a trial of McAfee on it. However, because of severe illness I wasn’t able to set up the laptop for six weeks. When I finally did this, I found that McAfee had started another unlimited subscription on it, and charged me another £109.90. I obviously don’t want or need this, but I can’t contact McAfee about this. Will you be able to help?
Patricia Goodall
A We’ll certainly do our best because it seems that McAfee began Patricia’s subscription automatically after the free 30-day trial ended on her new laptop. If so, we need to find out whether it automatically opted her into a subscription (which is illegal), or Patricia unintentionally agreed to it.
We also need to find out how McAfee got Patricia’s bank details and why it chose the same subscription (unlimited) she’s already paying for.
It seems odd that McAfee didn’t identify Patricia as a customer with an existing subscription who therefore didn’t need another one. Patricia says she has now deleted McAfee from all her devices, even though she was entitled to use the existing subscription until January.