Prevent Auto Renew

There are older articles here on the subject but I'd like to know what the current answer would be.

My Total Security subscription is set to expire in a few days. I normally purchase a new license through Amazon then just enter the code. That way I don't have to worry about being charged the full amount by BD the next time I need to renew. But I might want to take advantage of a recent offer from BD itself so what are the steps in 2026 to prevent BD from auto renewing my license next year? Can I remove my payment information manually so the credit card is no longer on file? Thank you in advance for any help.

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Alexandru_BD

Hi,

You'll find all the steps and ways to configure your preferences for automatic renewal here:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/29081/

Regards

Teksonik

Thanks but that's a whole lot of steps just to keep BD from charging me full price next year.

Alexandru_BD

Hi,

You don't have to follow all the steps, just the relevant ones, as the process varies depending on the payment processor. Bitdefender doesn't sell their security products and services directly, but through a vendor/payment processor. But I think it's not much different from other types of consumer subscriptions, for example gaming or streaming services where you still have to follow some sort of cancellation procedure..

Teksonik

Here's a recent Amazon review from one of your customers (not me):

"I have been a Bitdefender user for a number of years. In 2022 we had a falling out due to them automatically charging my credit card over a hundred dollars for a 1 year renewal when I could buy it from Amazon for $40. I had thought I stopped that from happening thru the software but they purposely made it confusing and ending with me not having properly disabled it. I ended up contesting the charges with my credit card company and after much tribulation Bitdefender agreed to give me another year as a consolation prize to allow the charge to go through. I don't like being scammed by the anti-scam software company that is supposed to protect me. For me, I had had it with their crooked ways and decided that this would be my last time getting the software".

Do you see why I don't trust you to not charge me full price at renewal? It's pretty sad when the company you pay to protect your computers can't be trusted to protect your credit card from being overcharged out of pure greed.

Ever since 2021 I have been buying the renew code from Amazon but this year the BD Authorizer wouldn't accept the code, "not valid". Luckily Amazon refunded my money.

So my choices now are to buy direct from BD and end up getting ripped off next year or to simply let my BD TS license expire and go with another company. I have not yet decided which I will do. I have loved BDTS for many years but the way you treat loyal customers is disgusting.

Teksonik

You can see it says "Only Available to customers located in the United States". I am in the US and I do not use a VPN. Then in the activation window you can see it says "Restricted in your region". Are you just blocking all third party codes now?

Alexandru_BD

Hi @Teksonik,

If the code is made available to customers located in the U.S., then it should obviously work there and you shouldn't get that error message. Perhaps the code generated was intended for a different area, or its geo-location restriction was incorrectly set from the very beginning. Codes are not blocked randomly and there's a reasoning behind such activation restrictions.
Common reasons include regional licensing agreements, for example vendors often sell through local distributors or resellers who are authorized only for certain countries or regions. A code sold for one market may be blocked elsewhere to honor those contracts. You also have to keep in mind the price differences between markets. Security products are sometimes priced differently by region because of taxes, local purchasing power, promotions, or channel strategy. Geo-restriction helps prevent cross-region resale of cheaper codes. This is also a way to prevent fraud. Some activation codes can be resold through unauthorized channels and this is still happening, it is something very difficult to combat otherwise.. Restricting activation by region helps reduce abuse, stolen-code resale, bulk reselling, and marketplace arbitrage.

Then there's also the matter of tax and legal compliance. Different countries have different rules for digital goods, invoicing, consumer rights, sanctions, and export controls. Limiting where a code can be activated can help the vendor stay compliant. There are also various campaigns running in different places, sometimes overlapping, or in specific periods of the year. This is one of the reasons why you may find different pricing for apparently the same product. A code may be issued as part of a local campaign, ISP bundle, retailer promotion, or hardware bundle intended only for users in a specific country.

Also, vendors may tie certain codes to regions where they can provide language support, billing support, or region-specific infrastructure and terms.

Note that in some territories, companies may be restricted from offering, renewing, or activating cybersecurity software due to local law, trade restrictions, or international sanctions. This is yet another reason for which activation can be restricted to a specific region.

And last but not least, even if at first glance the product may look the same, sometimes there are backend catalog differences between what you find at a marketplace/reseller and what is available online on the Bitdefender website. This means that the code sold at Amazon, for example, may or may not be from a recent batch, it could be an older version (this doesn't mean it's deprecated or won't work as expected, since it will update to the latest version when installing), but it can lack some of the features that were introduced more recently. Sometimes, the same product name can have different internal components, renewal model, or included features. Take for example the standard activation code (license) and the subscription model, or the recently launched plans (individual/family).

And there's more to the story, really. I can't know for sure why that code was declined, but I think they could have provided you with a replacement at least, or you could have called Bitdefender Support for assistance, they would have helped for sure.

There's a misconception of being "overcharged" during the subscription renewal, if the automatic billing is kept enabled, when in fact, if we're talking about a subscription model (something that's very popular these days and not only in the cybersecurity industry), there's usually a good discount for the 1st year of subscription available on the Bitdefender website for customers. What this means is that you'll get a fair discount when purchasing, and when the renewal date comes, you will be charged the full list price of the product you chose, excluding any discounts or promotions that may or may not be available at the time of renewal.
To put it simply, it's what you would have paid anyway if Bitdefender didn't offer any discounts at all.

It's not about greed, it's about all the things I wrote above, plus others, things that I'm sure whoever posted that poor Amazon review was unaware of. You see, it's easier to lay blame and call legitimate companies names, than to make an effort to listen to reason and understand why things are happening the way they are.😉

All the best

Teksonik

I did contact BD customer support. They did nothing. They just told me to contact Amazon support which I did. Luckily even though the product was marked as non-refundable Amazon did refund the purchase price.
As for the subscription, each year including this year I am given an offer to renew because I am not on auto-renew. This year it is $39.99 which is fair although the price at Amazon was $33.99 so looking at it from the customer's point of view why would we sign up for auto-renew and pay $109.99 next year or even the currently discounted price of $59.99 when we can take advantage of the yearly renew offer? I did pay full price during my first year which I think was probably at least a decade ago or more and of course have paid every year to renew.

That's not how "legitimate companies" should operate. We should be rewarded for our long time loyalty not punished for it. You can spin it all you like in defense of your company but long time customers should not have to worry about being overcharged just because we sign up for auto-renew. Whether or not other companies engage in the same practice is irrelevant.

I really like BDTS as a product but the way BD handles business in this regards is very annoying.

At any rate I have the rest of the day to decide what to do but the thought of having to pay more than double the renew rate next year just because I signed up for auto-renew and gave you access to my credit card is weighing heavily on my decision. Just hoping that opting out after going through a convoluted process will work doesn't give me much solace and the thought of fighting my credit card company to dispute a charge is not appealing at all.

Certainly if you step out of your role as a company representative and see it from the long time customer's point of view you can see that my concerns are valid.

Alexandru_BD

Don't get me wrong, I do understand your point of view and to be honest, I think it's fair, coming from a customer who's loyal to the brand. I'm not trying to play the advocate here, I'm simply explaining why things are the way they are, and how this subscription business model is working not only for us, but for others as well, as irrelevant as it may seem, we are talking about an industry trend, after all.
Know that your loyalty is appreciated, even though it may not feel like it right now.

I feel the need to add something here. Bitdefender doesn't sell their products and services directly, but through vendors. For example, 2Checkout, formerly known as Avangate and now part of Verifone is an authorized vendor for purchases made through the official Bitdefender website. This is a trusted global payment platform that ensures a secure and seamless checkout experience, allowing customers to make purchases with confidence. You might have noticed that it supports multiple payment methods, including credit cards, PayPal, and other options, as well as various currencies, making it accessible to customers worldwide who wish to buy Bitdefender products and services.
Since the shopping cart and checkout are managed by them, the discounted price is applied during purchase, and for subsequent renewals the system is automatically set to apply the full list price of the respective plan, when the billing date comes. There's no manual editing here, this is how it works.

So, this a payment processor that's not tied nor connected to Amazon, or other marketplaces where you may indeed find better deals, but even there, they don't happen all the time. This is a subscription management system that knows it must charge the list price for a specific product according to its preset parameters and product portfolio. And these parameters cannot be altered mid-subscription, as a service provider you cannot simply play and edit your billing system the way you see fit, once you've committed to a contract. And the vendor doesn't look at Amazon and says "hey, I see there's a better price there, let me match that or give you an even better deal!".
The checkout simply applies the 1st year discount during the initial purchase, then it charges what it would normally charge, according to the catalogue and without the discount.

And like I've mentioned previously, the automatic renewal pricing is not linked to ongoing offers, discounts and promotions available at our official website or at different points of sale throughout the Bitdefender Partner Network and for this reason, they are also trying to offer customers the opportunity to manually renew at favorable prices during the subscription period. The offers you've mentioned are not only sent if the automatic renewal feature is disabled, they can also be sent when the feature is enabled, and this is actually where long time customers can get a better deal during their subscription period, or closer to their renewal date. And of course, the price at which the auto-renewal is applied can be seen in automatic notifications so that any customer can request either the deactivation of the option, or seek a more advantageous offer.

It's not mandatory to use automatic renewal if you don't agree with it. It think it all boils down to how much you are willing to pay for a service, and if you value convenience over deal hunting. Sure, you may find good deals out there, but just for future reference, keep in mind that not all sellers are affiliated with Bitdefender.
In some cases (obviously it was not the case here) you may be sold the products cheaper, but you have no assurance that these products correspond to the local description. In our experience, it can sometimes happen that the licenses are not valid or have the correct maturity. I've seen dozens of people being happy that they spent $20 on Bitdefender only to find out that they actually bought something else…
So if you're looking to buy Bitdefender cheap, look twice.

The automatic renewal feature does have its advantages, it ensures continuous protection and peace of mind, and it saves time, since you won’t have to go through all the steps of manually renewing your subscription each year. Of course you can cancel this feature at any time and look for a better deal. Again, it's a choice. You can either pay the full renewal price so you don't have to worry about finding deals, searching the internet, ordering again, getting the wrong product or running into other issues, etc,. or cancel everytime and hunt for deals.
I learned that most users prefer to have peace of mind and save time. In fact, 90% of Bitdefender customers choose to keep the auto-renewal plan.
And I don't want to sound condescending, but this is what a top-notch security product is actually worth. Its price in full.

Regards

Teksonik

Well I went ahead and renewed my license from within BD but nothing I have received from 2Checkout has allowed me to renew my license. The "2Checkout subscription reference" Code doesn't work. So now what? It's never been this hard to renew. Beyond frustrated.

Teksonik

Okay so they gave me an entirely different subscription instead of renewing my current plan. I had to manually uninstall all BD products, do a restart, then run the new installer, on two different systems. What were you saying about "if you value convenience"? My phone still shows "expires in one day" even after uninstalling then reinstalling from a link sent from the new subscription so who knows what's going on there. I may just uninstall it since it's asking for every permission available. All in all a very unpleasant experience and that's before doing battle to stop auto renew. ☹️

Alexandru_BD

Hi,

Most probably here we are faced with a "license" vs. "subscription" scenario and the two products were not identical.
I will try to explain this in simple, clear terms: You have apples and oranges and you can't weigh them in the same bag because they have different prices. When you attempt to extend a license, or even a subscription using an activation code that doesn't share the same parameters (same product name, same number of devices, same plan components, etc.), you won't be given the option to extend the current license when you reach this step, and you can only activate a new license instead. The below screenshot illustrates how both options look like:

This leads to the following outcome: because they cannot be merged, the two licenses/subscriptions will run in parallel (overlap) until one of them expires. The problem with this is that the devices will not be automatically assigned, or protected by the new subscription you have activated. They don't know that, so they stay with the previous license, as long as that one is still valid and can protect them. In this case, there are two possible solutions. You either wait until the previous license expires, and then your devices will be automatically reallocated to the new subscription that can protect them, OR you can manually reallocate them yourself using the Central account. Basically you can move them from the old license to the new subscription, if that makes sense. In both cases, the drawback of having licenses/subscriptions that overlap for a period of time is that some validity will be lost on one of them, because one runs empty while the other one has devices assigned on it..

The catch is that you don't have to reinstall the product on all your protected devices if you do this. Because once a device is moved to another subscription running in that Central account, Bitdefender's features and plan (if the product is installed of course) will change according to that. And to sync the subscription after making these changes you can simply open the Bitdefender UI and click on Switch Account to re-enter your Central account credentials, if necessary. Bottom line is, in order for Bitdefender to work, it has to be linked with the correct subscription/license from the Central account, because this is where it draws its validity and configuration from.

As for that phone showing that the BMS is expiring, try to remove the device from Central completely, then reinstall protection using another link from the new sub. NOTE: if you uninstall Bitdefender from a device, for whatever reasons, you should also remove the device from Central, from the My Devices tab, to free up the slot.
Otherwise it may show as a duplicate when you are reinstalling.

Let me know if this makes sense to you. I can come back with more screenshots, should you require this.

And I'm really sorry to hear you went through all this hassle just to renew your protection..
I'm just trying to help.

Teksonik

Thank you, I know you're just trying to help but to be clear I purchased the renew directly from within BDTS/BD Central. So "Most probably here we are faced with a "license" vs. "subscription" scenario and the two products were not identical" does not make sense to me.

Any confusion or conflict came from within the BD system itself so you can see how frustrating that can be to the paying customer. I have renewed my license year after year without any such issues.

I had no way of knowing that the new license would automatically be applied when the old one expired. All I knew was I kept getting constant reminders that my subscription would expire in a mater of hours.

I was automatically given a link to the BDTS installer even though it was already installed and running and had been for years. The downloaded installer from that link would not install until I uninstalled the current software which was even more frustrating. You would think that installer would be smart enough to detect then remove the current install.

So all in all it seemed like a very inefficient and convoluted process. There was no communication or instructions during the process so I was left to guess how to best solve the problem.

So now I am left with this, nagging me to renew that sits alongside my current license which is active until April 2027. I would ask for the old one to be removed from my account but I don't want to risk the chance of the wrong license being removed.

The bottom line is if we can't trust the renew/payment system it makes us wonder if we can really trust the efficiency of BDTS itself. To be honest if I had known how much hassle it would be to renew then turn off auto renew so I don't get charged twice as much next year I would have gone with another security solution.

Alexandru_BD

Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Looking at the previous screenshot you attached, I noticed that you purchased a Total Security Individual Plan.
While this may have the same name and number of slots as your previous license, this is part of the new Bitdefender portfolio, where Individual and Family plans are available for purchase. And because the previous license you owned was issued before the new portfolio was introduced, it's not really identical, thus it was not possible to extend it using this newer subscription. If you check both licenses (they should be next to each other in Central), you'll spot this difference. And If you go on the product page for Total Security, you'll notice the plan split and their characteristics:

https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/consumer/total-security

In the same way, the validity of an Individual Plan cannot be extended using an activation code for a Family Plan.
Now to give you an even clearer example, let's say that you purchase a license from Amazon and you are given an activation code. The product may be called the same and it may even have the same number of slots available for protection, let's say 5. You run this license for the entire duration of its validity, let's say 1 year. When this one expires, you no longer find a discount on Amazon to renew it, instead you find a better deal on the official Bitdefender website. You purchase from there, and get an activation code following the order. That activation code is for the newer Bitdefender Individual plan, also for 5 devices, and enrolls you in a subscription by default. However, because of these differences, the fact that the product from Amazon is a license and not an actual subscription (so it doesn't have a renewal flow), and because the activation code was issued at an earlier date, so before the new Bitdefender portfolio featuring the plans was launched, there will be an incompatibility between them, meaning that one cannot extend the other. But once you get going and enroll in a subscription that's continuous and renews automatically, you won't have to worry about any of this, as the product will be extended automatically. Yes, the drawback is that you will be charged the full list price of the product, when the renewal date comes.
You may find yourself in the same scenario should you disable the automatic renewal for the Individual Plan, and try to renew manually by purchasing a license from Amazon. Again, this would mean that the two products are not identical and cannot be merged, so you cannot extend an individual plan with a license from a marketplace, and vice-versa. I hope this makes more sense now.

I know this may be confusing, but like I said in one of my previous comments, not all codes out there are identical or share the same features. On the product page, if you scroll down to the terms of use section, there's a paragraph stating that "Your subscription may include product, service and/or protection updates and features that may be added, modified or removed subject to Bitdefender Subscription Agreement and Terms and Conditions for Home Users and Privacy Notice." and this refers to some differences that may exist between subscriptions and licenses, but also to any changes that may take place, such as new features that may be introduced in some suites, or even features that may be discontinued (EOL). In general however, the renewal process should go smoothly, but we've seen corner cases where due to differences between subscriptions and packages, it was not very straightforward to the customer to extend, or in some cases users had overlapping licenses/subscriptions. There can also be situations where manual adjustments are necessary, and these can be carried out by the Support teams, when needed.
In this particular case, the expired license that's still showing up there will be removed automatically, usually within 30 days. If Bitdefender installed on your devices shows that they are protected, then this means that the devices are allocated to the correct license.

Such issues may arise in times of transition, migration, or whenever important changes are being carried out in the product lineup. When all subscriptions are standardized, in the sense that subscribing to security services becomes the norm everywhere, this process will become even smoother. I mean, this is where the market is heading for a while now, if you look at utilities and streaming services, and not limited to those, the subscription model has been adopted in many industries, so I think it's only natural that it made its way into cybersecurity as well.
I think many of us are still used to the old way of doing things, for example you get a scratch code for something, and use that credit/validity. Like prepaid cards or license codes for games and other software. But that's becoming a thing of the past, subscriptions are the new deal now..

I would like to add that your feedback is noted and appreciated.

Regards

Teksonik

Okay that explanation makes sense. You've changed your plans. I get it that subscription plans are all the rage these days even in the music production software industry but I find them to be repulsive none the less and I don't participate in any of them. BDTS is the exception.

But as a further bit of feedback if my only option next April is to pay $110 for a year I will simply switch to another security solution. Even if I have to switch back and forth every year to avoid the inflated renew prices I will do so.

No offense to Bitdefender but that's simply more than I am willing to pay since I don't use many of the features such as the password manager, parental controls, and very rarely the VPN.

Alexandru_BD

Thanks, your honest feedback is expected, fair and appreciated of course. 👍️
I think we can simplify things going forward, when the renewal date comes, you can check this area of the Bitdefender website for existing customers and this way you will get a better price. Just pay attention to the plan that you are using, so that you order the same. You can check out the discounted prices anytime here:

https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/renewal/

And before ordering, make sure to disable the automatic renewal feature, since you will be renewing manually. This would be the most advantageous way to do it, and it's unlikely that you would pay $110 this way. More like half of it, but the final price depends on the discount percentage available at the time of your renewal. Usually, it's a good deal.
For the record, you may also receive early renewal offers via email, or in Central, or in-product, but here as well you need to make sure the offer you get is for the same product that you are using, because in some cases, the offers don't match the exact plan the user is having, or the number of slots. It depends on the campaign, market and other criteria.

I hope this helps and that you'll stay with Bitdefender for a long time. 😉