NOTE: This technical article was published long time ago. It may be not up to date. Please check for the newest versions of mentioned software. Also I am not able to provide technical support anymore. Thank you for your understanding.

CrashPlan is pretty amazing backup solution – it provides multiple backup solutions for your personal data, including unlimited cloud storage, backup to friends or local devices and other. They charge $59.99 annually for unlimited plan (1 computer). Frequently (like, all the time) they offer large discounts (20% and more) for new users. However, they forget about existing users – if you want to extend your subscription, you need to pay full amount. When I asked them about that, they told me, that it is a technical difficulty to sort this out in their billing system.

I think it’s unfair for existing customers, who refer the service to their friends and families (i.e. I referred them to at least 4 or 5 paying customers). I found a way to extend your account with the discount in a couple of easy steps:

1. Log into your CrashPlan account on their website.
2. Find your subscription, cancel it. They will warn you, that all data will be deleted. What they won’t tell you is that they will not do it immediately – your data is still there for a couple of hours.
3. At this moment go to the discount offer page (look at their website or facebook page), while still logged in.
4. Buy the discounted subscription. You will receive new license key.
5. In the CrashPlan application delete old license key and paste the new one.
6. Enjoy your extended subscription at the discounted price 🙂

Note: this method is valid as of November 1, 2013.

Note2: I tried to use this method recently (November 1, 2015) and it doesn’t seem to be working anymore. If you were successful – please let me know!