The cost of not renewing anti-virus protection early

Buying anti-virus protection for your computer is a bit like buying health insurance for yourself as statistically speaking you are unlikely to need it, but it helps you sleep at night. It’s fear, often fuelled by the makers of these products that drives you to buying them and it’s that fear that ensures I buy one of the premium products each year rather than one of the many free versions you can download.

Once you have one of these products towards the end of the annual license they’ll prompt you to renew directly with them, in fact they make it very easy to renew but in my particular case at a price of £39.99. Now that’s a ludicrously high price considering I can buy the 2009 version of the same software for just £27.97 on Amazon, so that’s exactly what I did a couple of weeks in advance of my current license expiring.

They can get away with charging such a high price because some people are lazy and either can’t be bothered to shop around, or leave it to the last minute and opt for the direct renewal option for fear of catching a virus whilst waiting for their updated software to be delivered.

However the downside of purchasing early is you’ll sometimes find the price drops and that’s what happened to me a week after receiving my new anti-virus software. Fortunately by buying from Amazon a quick email to them asking for the difference worked and they refunded me £6 within a few days.