Norton 360 Renewal Cost Beyond Ridiculous

When I renewed my Norton subscription in 2019 the cost was A$99.99

Last year the renewal cost had risen to A$109.99

Today I received an email from Norton indication the cost to renew would be... wait for it.... A$244.99 !!!

Obviously I'll be changing to a reasonably priced alternative AV software but before I go I just wondered what the official Norton line was to try and explain away this blatant attempt at price gouging.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

bjm_:
[...]
Dear User,
Thank you for renewing Norton Life-Look Security from us
USD 699.99 Charged Successfully and it will appear on your bank statement In 24 to 48 hours.

surprise  Ouch!

Norton <deleted>@gmail.com>
Thu 21-Oct-21 3:24 PM

To: You
NortonLifeLockTM
Auto Renewal
AMOUNT PAID SUCCESSFULLY!
Invoice: LL-2166-9054xc   

Dear User,
Thank you for renewing Norton Life-Look Security from us
USD 699.99 Charged Successfully and it will appear on your bank statement In 24 to 48 hours.
If you did not order it and want claim a refund or cancel the paid services. Please Feel free to call our customer support at +1 (888) <deleted>.

Invoice No LL-2166-9054
Invoice Amount USD 699.99
Invoice Date 23 August 2021
Due Date 24 August 2022

I got the following message.  Obviously a scam - Norton billed my account for $104.99 + tax on 10/12 and sent me a message to that effect.  This message came from a gmail account and the sending server was a google server.  I checked my credit card and there is no charge on it.

This was also a follow up from a similar message yesterday (which I didn't report to Norton - this one I did).

*** SCAM Message follows ***

 Norton LifeLock™

Invoice No #NOR215484

Your Norton Expired Today

Thanks for using our Norton Security for the past one year!

Registered Email Id - <deleted>

We wanted to remind you that you've chosen the automatic renewal option. You will be billed from your saved card details for the annual amount of your plan upon expiration of your contract on Friday, October 22, 2021.

DescriptionQuantityUnit PriceTotal

Norton 360 LifeLock™ Now includes Smart Firewall, Password Manager
and 2GB Cloud Backup(Three Year Subscription)$199.99$199.99

Sub Total$199.99

Sales tax$0.00

Billed Amount$199.99

Deduction of amount will appear on your account within 24 hours. If you have any Question or wish to Refund and Cancel the Renewal Kindly Call us on +1 (850) 772-0377 (Toll Free) within Two working days.

Thanks

Norton LifeLock
Norton Life Lock, 350 Ellis St, Mountain View, California - 94043, USA

Keep an eye on Big W, Harvey Norman and the like.  As @peterweb mentioned, you can often find cheaper deals available in retail stores.

Here's a link to the Norton Remove and Reinstall Tool:

http://www.norton.com/nrnr

You should be able to find Norton in local retailer. 

Anyway, good luck with your choice. If you do move away from Norton, be sure you run the Norton Removal and Reinstall Tool using the Advanced Options > Remove Only before installing your new product.

 

Nope, no upgrades and, as far as I know, the same product it always was.

Needless to say, when I saw the exorbitant renewal cost I turned off the auto-renewal but I bet a whole heap of people who fail to check the cost will be getting stung by this Norton instigated scam and will be very unhappy.

I did see Norton 360 for sale on Amazon at a good price but then realized it was a German edition sold out of the UK so not a lot of use to me here in Australia.

Alternatives such as Bitdefender and Kaspersky have both scored higher than Norton in recent reviews so will now be looking at them. It's a pain having to change all my devices over to something new but it appears Norton's greed will be their undoing.

Have you upgraded to a new product since the last renewal? ie Did you take advantage of the 'free' upgrade to 360 from an older product? That could explain the price difference.

You can also disable the auto renewal and purchase a new subscription at a lower price from a reputable retailer.

 

Definitely not a scam email, it's from Norton and the price can be verified on their website.

The only 'scam' here is the one from Norton who've upped the price of their product by nearly 150%!

It's a shame because it is a good product but many will not want (or are even able) to pay such a high price for a bit of AV software. Plus there will be a lot of very upset customers on auto-renew who did not check and who have then been whacked with Norton's exorbitant new price structure.

Not an official Norton statement.

What Norton is doing is using the same marketing model used by most subscription based services. New customers get a promotional price for the first subscription period to sign up. Then at renewal, they are charged the current 'regular' price.

One other thing to check is to see if this was a genuine Norton email   Is this email from Norton legitimate?  There are a lot of scam emails these days.

If you are looking to move on, be sure you log into your Norton Account and turn off the Automatic Renewal for your current subscription.

 

Verify that an email you receive from Norton is legitimate
https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v71088498 - 08/31/2021

Report a spam or scam email to NortonLifeLock
https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v138341527 - 05/26/2021

Edit: 
Verify that an email you receive from Norton is legitimate = 
502 Bad Gateway
Report a spam or scam email to NortonLifeLock = 502 Bad Gateway

Norton Services Status
One or more services are experiencing problems Oct 18, 2021, 09:54 AM

Norton Services Status
All services are running without problems Oct 18, 2021, 10:30 AM

https://status.norton.com/