I am really curious by Malwarbytes, while offering a 5-cent discount on annual billing for the nominal 6.67 monthly pricing for MB Personal for 5 macs
The company manages to add a surcharge of 3-cents for the MB Personal +VPN
Just trying to do an INTUITION check
Please check my Math on this… maybe my Mac OS Calulator App is wonky
Yeah. The pricing is per year, but they’re dividing it by 12 and rounding to the nearest cent for the price list. I guess their marketing people decided it’s better to advertise a monthly price instead of an annual price.
The problem here is that the way it’s presented, it looks like a monthly billing vs. annual billing choice, when the only actual choice is annual billing. By making the monthly cost more prominent, they’re obfuscating the fact that you can’t actually choose to be billed monthly. I don’t think they’re doing that intentionally, but I can easily see customers getting confused during the process, especially when the amounts are off by a few cents due to rounding.
I’d rather see them put the annual charge at the top and below that, break it out into monthly cost and mark those as approximate. That would be clearer and less misleading.
A More Curiouser Observation:
I recently sent a query to MB support and received a response that was apparently translated from Slovenian to the effect:
From postmaster@malwarebytes.onmicrosoft (dot com)
The recipient’s mailbox is full and can’t accept messages now. Please try resending your message later, or contact the recipient directly.
I was under the impression that Malwarebytes Company was based in Santa Clara, CA
It definitely is, but I know they have employees scattered all over the world. It became even more evident with the COVID-19 work from home policy. They also use 3rd party companies for at least some functions (e.g. subscriptions and billing).
An additional bit of mystery,
For the first 13 days of my trial period, I could not get the Real-Time Protection to toggle on.
I started the app this afternoon, after having recently sent the aforementioned customer support inquiry to MB Support, for which there really has not been time to hear back…
I note, this afternoon, the day Premium Trial Features will expire: Real Time Protection is now on … go figure
Point being, actually, instead of emailing me with some instructions, or advisory, it appears somebody at Malwarebytes turned the features on, remotely for my computer
Kind of weird
And Things Are Getting Weirder Please peruse the attached screenshots! The personal 3.33/month 1 Device pricing is via a Firefox 94.0.1. The $1/month pricing is the same website, using Safari 15.1
(upload://oUGutADGUM0H1WWmC9m9GqKholw.png)
There’s something weird going on there. I just checked (on a 2011 MacBook Air running Sierra).
Using Firefox 94.0.1, I see 5 devices for $40/yr ($3.33/mo), 10 devices for $50/yr ($4.17/mo) and 5 devices with privacy for $60/yr ($5/mo).
Using Safari 12.1.2, I see different offers, not just different prices. It shows 1 device for $40/yr ($3.33/mo), 5 devices for $80 ($6.67/mo) and 5 devices with privacy for $100/yr ($8.33/mo).
Both from the same URL: https://www.malwarebytes.com/pricing
I just tried the site on a MBPro 2017 running Big Sur which renders the normal pricing
I’ll try again later on the mac that I found the $1 pricing, no guarantees I can replicate the navigation to
that odd page. But at least the screenshot displayed the (temporary?) oddity
I’ll add the edit here:
So here’s the caveat navigating with Safari Version 15.1 (16612.2.9.1.30, 16612)
Running Monterey 12.1 Beta … perhaps the pertinent factor?
Here is my result after clearing the History in Safari
Note the absence of the $1 rate for one device, and the modified rate for 5 devices
from $2.50 to the “normal” $3.33 … I am trying to sort out psychologically now if there is some trust-factor issues going on with Malwarebytes 
BTW, I am exercising my paranoiac right to save this thread as a pdf 
LOL
Same system specs as above Safari 15.1, Monterey 12.1 beta
It’s not too unusual to find web sites share different prices based on browser identities. Part of targeted advertising, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern here.
Just to follow up, it’s been a week since I created a support ticket on a different issue which simply allowed me to discover this pricing weirdness, with no response.
My intuition is that the Malwarebytes company follows sort of an odd business model, or has a rather chaotic business structure. I am not sure how having a global array of support points would impact the quality of support. Doesn’t make sense to me.
All I can say is that a 5 to 7 business day delay for a response to a support ticket is the average time observed according to postings on their forum. By comparison, forum responses are normally same business day. But licensing issues can only be answered via support ticket.
Yep,
belated thanks
They did reach out yesterday,
