Sold Down the Digital River

If there’s one kind of product that ought to be easy to sell online, it’s software. And maybe it would be if companies like online software distributor Digital River didn’t make it so hard to just buy what you want. At least that’s how one reader feels after trying in vain not to order Digital River’s bogus “extended download” insurance while purchasing a BlackIce subscription renewal.

“Last night I was home and on my music machine (a computer I have set up exclusively to deal with digital music and recording) and noticed that my Symantec Internet Security had expired,” the reader wrote. “The company where I work just purchased 100 seats of Sophos AV and Sophos kindly allows a matching number of installations for a company’s home users (you buy 100 for your company, Sophos gives you 100 more ‘standalone’ installs for home users). This is great policy and most welcome. I thought that I’d uninstall Symantec and install Sophos in its place, but this would leave me without a firewall. I have the BlackIce firewall from ISS, but that too had lapsed and so I decided to renew the product.”

The reader went to the ISS website and purchased a renewal for BlackIce for $19.95. “When I hit the checkout button, there was an option box for an additional $6.99 already checked that prompted for download insurance, some goofy policy that allows a purchaser to re-download their purchase for up to one year. I cannot imagine why anyone would need to do this, but there it is. I unchecked the box and hit the ‘update order’ button to opt out of the insurance, and that appeared to do the trick. So I proceeded through the purchase, entering my personal data. That box popped up again, once more already filled in, obligating me to the additional $6.99. Once again I un-checked it, and again it looked like I could just pay #19.95. At the end of the purchase I was given a summary of my purchase and you can imagine what happened; I was charged the extra $6.99. At this point, it was a done turkey as I had made the purchase. I was livid and searched for somewhere to call or write to get this charge off my card.”

“I finally found a cheesy customer service request form at Digital River and filled it in,” the reader wrote. “There was no subject line and no way for me to create one or modify one. It was only when pre-viewing my form before submitting that I noticed a subject line had been automatically entered – something about trouble downloading my purchase. I had not even tried to download it yet! I sent the form in anyway and got back just about exactly the response I thought I would – mostly just links to their FAQ pages. My complaint about the $6.99 charge was not even mentioned and Digital River had neatly ‘answered’ my request for help and answered the subject line that they made up. This smells of scam to me. There was no way to opt out of that charge and even when I was sure that I had, I got billed anyway.”

The reader is hardly alone in this experience. It’s not the first time I’ve heard similar complaints about how hard Digital River makes it to avoid paying for their “Extended Download Service” when downloading products from any number of software publishers. This “insurance” has never made much sense – after all, why you should have to pay even a few bucks for a backup copy that you’re really entitled to anyway? But the download insurance seems particularly ridiculous in this situation, because the reader was just downloading a one-year renewal for support and updates on his existing BlackIce software. What possible reason would there be for him to want this service other than a desire to give Digital River seven bucks for nothing?

Of course, it wasn’t the amount that bugged the reader. “Ed, $6.99 is not going to bankrupt me, but it’s the principle,” he wrote. “The amount is small enough that I imagine most people will just say ‘oh well,’ let Digital River be richer by $6.99, and move on. But I have been seeing so many scams that this one just pushed me over my [expletive] tolerance edge. If Digital River processes just 100 purchases per day, they make an additional $699 — that’s $4,893 per week and over $250,000 a year. I am at a point where I do not trust any online transaction any more. If you look far enough, there is nearly always someone making something extra from these ‘deals’ and now Digital River has joined in the fun.”

What vendor have you seen making the process of buying stuff online a lot less trustworthy than it should be? Tell us about it by posting your comments on my website, calling the Gripe Line voice mail at 1 888 875-7916 or writing me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.

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