Double billing and extremely difficult refund process.
I have been a CCleaner user since their first release in 2004, that’s 20 years. The software is very good and does what it advertises. I have always been very happy with the software.
Today, I noticed a double charge on my bank statement for the same amount, twice. I didn’t recognize the merchant. It came through PayPal. Off to PayPal I go to investigate. It’s Cleverbridge a billing company for Piriform, the company that owns CCleaner and other software like Recuva. Great thing with PayPal is that you can see transaction history. I was shocked to see that CCleaner had been charging me double for the past 5 years. I hadn’t noticed. So, I started looking for away to request a refund. There is no obvious link to do this anywhere on their site or emails. I came here to the forum to search for a way to request a refund. The search returned numerous posts about the difficulty people have straightening this out. It seems that in order to request a refund you have to create a trouble ticket. All of the posts say that it takes an inordinate amount of time for the support team to respond and then they are not helpful after the request is made. Most say that they haven’t been able to receive a refund. I’m not even going to go through the trouble. If Piriform is going to stoop to such underhanded business practices, I want nothing to do with them. I have cancelled my account and ordered the bank to block all future transactions and start an investigation into this matter. Shame on you Piriform, you have just lost a lifetime customer and now I will be a negative advertiser to all those I have recommended your services to and to all future customers of mine, I will not be recommending CCleaner. I will find something else to assist my clients.
I own a domain hosting service and I have many clients that we service their technical support needs. Big loss for you guys.