Trend Micro Renewal with Digital River

I recently received a receipt from PayPal notifying me I had sent a payment of AUD$179.95 to a company called Big River Ireland Ltd, which I had never heard of, for a subscription to Trend Micro. Suddenly I became very concerned and thought is this a scam, my Trend Micro Security has never been that expensive and it’s not supplied by a company called Digital River.

Luckily enough the payment was still to be processed, so I asked my bank to reject the payment and fortunately they were able to cancel the payment instantly for me. I also placed Digital River on a watch list for my account with my provider.

After further investigation I found that Digital River, Ireland Ltd appears to be a financial solutions business that Trend Micro must outsource their subscription renewal process to.

I can purchase a new licence on the internet for AUD $126.36 where my licence renewal through Digital River would cost me AUD$179.95, that’s an extremely large mark-up / processing fee.

Surely Trend Micro can see there is something wrong with that business model or maybe they “just don’t care” it may be a case of, if customers don’t notice/complain then don’t worry.

Yes, Trend Micro will inform you there is a way to remove the “Auto Renewal” option via your account, yet a simple “Op In/Op Out” option on the purchase page would resolve this issue early in the process, unless you don’t won’t to make it simple.

I have no issue with the Trend Micro security software in fact I am very happy with its functionality, it’s just the extremely large mark-up on the auto renewal and the “auto in” process I have taken offence with.

Just something to be aware of at subscription renewal time