AVG Nightmare: The Risks of Reselling Software

(TheForceField.Net) March 15, 2008 — Steven Young has a story to tell, and it’s pretty scary. It is a story about how a trusted vendor can easily put a reseller on a limb and possibly out of business at a moment’s notice. His experience is a good lesson for all of us, not just when selling software but when we do any type of consulting or migration with any software purchased.
 
Young, an IT reseller and member of computerbusiness@yahoogroups, posted about the incident early yesterday morning in the newsgroup. It is repost by permission in its entirety in The Force Field forums .

Young had registered as an AVG reseller and had been migrating his clients away from Norton and to AVG Network Edition. He recently sold one of his clients 100 user licenses of Network Edition 7.5. It hadn’t been an quick sell. Young had to meet with his client, a charity, numerous times to get approval for the purchase and migration. The client approved the purchase, but there was a problem.

 “Between board meetings to approve the software purchase and further meetings to approve the installation labor, AVG version 8 was released.”, Young wrote.  “I’ve been pretty deep in proposals writing and other work and didn’t pay much attention to the 8 release. I was planning to try it out but not to use it until the bugs get worked out – since most software companies release first versions when they should still be in beta these days.”

Young attempted to order licenses for version 7.5 but it was no longer for sale. The problem was, version 8 .0 was almost double the price and the client had already given Young a check.  Fortunately, once Young called the reseller support line they agreed to sell him version 8.0 for the same price as  version 7.5.

But when Young downloaded the trial version of 8.0 he found it too resource intensive. It also caused issues with FireFox. The software company offered a downgrade license to 7.5 so he decided to take advantage of it.

After a round of e-mails with Grisoft he finally reached someone who was willing to provide the downgrade, with a catch. To his surprise Young was told that AVG 7.5 updates would cease after December 31, 2008. After that date all installations were required to upgrade to version 8.0.

Young was miffed. “I asked who was paying me to upgrade 100+ computers from 7.5 to 8.0 only 9 months after paying me to install 7.5 on a 2 year license. She tried to comfort me by saying ‘there will be a button the user can click to upgrade to 8.0’!”, he fumed. Then he added, “I’m done with them.”

“You have been warned. Wish I had been!” Young said.

 
In an e-mail to The Force Field Young said he spoke to AVG Channel Operations Manager Jeff Zinnert. According to Young, Zinnert confirmed that version 7.5 would no longer update after December 31st.  “They are reviewing this due to outcry from other resellers though and it may change.. Hopefully!” Young said.
 
Reselling software is a risky business.
 
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