received an email from McAfee today and I can see what has happened.
"This message is brought to you as a McAfee trial user." McAfee placed me in a trial and put an expire date on the trial 6 months sooner than my purchased service. Instead of resuming my purchased service I am now out of service.
In situations like this, there are usually multiple accounts involved. While working for McAfee quite a number of customers contacted us daily with similar situations as which you describe and it nearly always turns out that the customer used multiple e-mail addresses to register different versions over the years.
Have a look at the reminder e-mails - to which e-mail address(es) have they been sent (in the past)? Contact McAfee CS, and ask them to search for your name and see if they can find multiple accounts.
If there are multiple accounts then the one you're using (i.e. the one belonging to the software you've still installed) could be extended by the appropriate amount. This means that you will not have to re-install, in all likelyhood.
This isn't the first time McAfee has tried to an unethical business practice to try and generate additional subscription fees from me.
Time to move on to a provider that values their customers.
The only thing that one *perhaps* could describe as "dodgy" concerning the subscription is the automatic renewal. The T&C shown to you before you make a purchase clearly state that the subscription will be automatically renewed. But people do not read, and end up being angry and surprised when they see McAfee took money from their bank account, supposedly without their permission.
While no organisation is perfect, and mistakes are made sometimes in the subscription system, it's a 1000x more likely it's actually the customer not keeping his administration in order (keeping track of which e-mail(s) he used to register, which accounts he has, etc).