A Which? member came to us for help after he paid £38 to buy a piece of computer software – which didn’t work – and then had to fork out another £59 to get rid of it.
Kenneth told us: A friend emailed me a PowerPoint file, but I don’t have PowerPoint on my PC. When I tried to open the file, I was offered a download to do so – RegCure Pro from Pareto Logic.
The download cost £38.40, which I paid through Safecart. But it didn’t open the file – instead it insisted on carrying out system scans, reporting more faults each time and crashing my PC.
My local computer shop charged £59 to remove it. My bank insisted I provide a letter from an independent expert describing the issue before it would try to retrieve my money from Pareto Logic. The computer shop said it had dealt with several such claims and had never been asked to write a letter, but would do so for a charge. What can I do?
How to get your money back
We say: RegCure Pro is designed to improve your PC’s performance. It’s not malware, but we’ve seen plenty of evidence of customers complaining about its impact on their computers – and it’s notoriously hard to uninstall.
If the software seller has led you to believe that it will open email attachments, we’d expect you’d be able to get a refund from Pareto Logic.
When we checked, the company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all of its software. As you’ve exceeded this period, you could ask your bank to make a chargeback claim. You can use our template letter to do this.
However, sometimes a bank will ask for details of your complaint before processing your request – and it’s a real bother that your computer shop won’t provide this free of charge.
We’d have recommended giving Pareto Logic the chance to put things right before going to your computer shop.
Have you had similar problems with a download that didn’t work?