On 16 October 2021, I paid Restoro Ltd £31.14 (£25.95 + VAT) for a year's subscription to their Premium PC 'repair plan'. This software claims to 'remove and detect viruses in real time, repair Windows damage and restore the operating system'. This price apparently includes '24/7 support for one year'. Let me say at the outset that this last statement is a gross misrepresentation. For I was talked into asking for support, believing it to be free (but forgetting that I'd seen it in print), only to be stung for £144 (inc. VAT) after the work had been carried out. My association with Restoro began with my purchase of their Premium Repair Plan after my PC had 3 times re-started of its own accord over Fri/Sat, 15-16th October - an instability which I falsely attributed to a dodgy upload or Windows 10 update. Running System Restore on the Sat (16 Oct), however, made matters worse, leading to the BSoD error, from which I extricated myself by uninstalling the latest Windows update. Suspecting that a serious breakdown was imminent, I bought Restoro and ran it Saturday evening, Sunday, Monday and Wednesday, believing that it would restore the stability of the operating system, as claimed. There had been another problem, though, with my computer. Over a period of a year leading up to the BSoD event on Saturday, I had also been troubled by irregular startup times. Startup would be rapid (22-35 sec), extending over several days, followed by a much longer single startup of up to 5 minutes, the delay protracted by a black screen with a line of twinkling dots. This suggested that the startup time, set for my computer, was too brief for it to carry out all its vital functions, and so it had to take time out to catch up (this was the black screen, or so I thought). So on Wednesday, 20 Oct, four days after I had purchased Restoro, I unchecked the fast start-up setting in Windows. This had the desired effect of evening out the startup times. Yet the black screen persisted...... until today, that is, Friday, 22 Oct, when I ran AVF Driver Updater and discovered that the cause of the black screen was actually an outdated driver. Since the update, I don't get the black screen at all. My grievance with Restoro Ltd really began yesterday (Thurs) afternoon when I tried to run the Restoro program, for which I had paid £31.14 - only to be asked for my licence number a second time. I had purchased a year's usage ... but it seemed that my registration had lapsed after only six days! Moreover, on re-inputting my licence code, I got the error message that it was invalid! I had no alternative but to call Restoro's hotline, 0800 107 975, and ask Mylene A. (who is on the staff of 'Reimage', a related PC 'restoration' software) to allow me back into the program that I had just paid for. Firstly, however, I had to agree to a 'LogMeIn Remote Access' session, so that she could enter some sort of re-activation key into the registration box. This she did; and I then assumed - correctly - that my registration would once again be recognised. But she offered me no apology for the inconvenience and indignity I had suffered of being asked to re-input my licence code and of having it rejected, even though I had made no mistake in the copying of it. Since there had been no explanation or expression of astonishment on her part, I naturally assumed that this was the norm. But if I had thought that my remote session was over, now that my registration was again being recognised, I was sorely mistaken. Mylene launched into her sales pitch, which began with two searching questions. The first aroused my suspicions: 'Was I knowledgable about computers?' 'No,' I replied. Having established that I was a greenhorn, the way was clear for her next question: 'When did someone last look at your computer?' She wanted me to acknowledge that it was high time that I took advantage of the remote session to invite a diagnostic expert to delve into my PC. Since I assumed that this service would be free, being part of the Premium package, I handed over my computer to the technician, to whom I recounted, using the LogMeIn dialogue box, my experience of the black screen issue and the BSoD that led me to buy the Restoro software. First, he asked me for my Windows PIN and password. This request was as outrageous as it was unnecessary in view of the remote access which he already had to my computer. I refused to give it. Marlene A. had also asked for my PIN. Why? There was a flurry of activity as the technician patently used antivirus and other software to 'clean up' my computer. Towards the end of this activity, which lasted for about 10 minutes, he left a highly compromising Windows file on my screen, showing no record at all of any instability or crashes since the start of October. But, despite this graphic evidence and my protestations to the contrary, he continued to explain, using the dialogue box, that my PC's stability and normal functioning had been seriously undermined by viruses and adware that had slipped through my Norton Internet Security net. This could not have been the case since, before my encounter, I had used Norton and Malwarebytes to reassure myself that my computer was indeed clean of viruses and adware, and that I should look elsewhere for the cause of the black screen. I was then presented with some blurb with some prices on it, and I twigged that this was the technician's way of presenting me with an invoice for the ten minutes of irrelevant virus-removal work that he had just carried out. Forgetting that the price was nominally covered by the £31.14 for the Restoro program on their website, though it had coloured my expectations subconsciously, I went for the cheapest price. This was £144 (incl. VAT) for a one-off fix. He asked me to restart my PC and let him know if it was sorted. There was no black screen when I rebooted, so I thought that he had indeed fixed that problem. (He hadn't. This morning I got the black screen again and realised that it was a driver issue.) When he later rang me, I answered in the affirmative. He then tried to talk me into doling out even more of my pension money to extend my support for a year by exaggerating the threat of further compromises to my PC's functioning, caused by virus, Trojans, etc. In conclusion, I feel that the whole scenario - the Restoro program nullifying my registration on the fifth day and not recognising my licence code even when I re-inputted it so that I was obliged to ring their office, the remote session that followed, the time-worn 'You've-got-virusses-let me-remove-them' spiel, the uncalled-for request, made twice, for my password and PIN, the absence of any pre-contract documentation or cooling-off period, the fact that payment of £144 was sprung on me after work, which I thought was free, had been carried out - the whole seedy business was a carefully planned operation, a sting - and I fell for it. The work that was carried out during the LogMeIn session should have been covered by the £31.14 that I paid for the Restoro program. I paid an extortionate price for support that should have been free to people who were a little too eager for me to divulge my password and PIN to them and all too keen to attribute every computer malfunction to viruses and malware.