Can folk just please provide more details about what platform that you have that you are talking about, whether or not you bought it new or used, whether or not you got a message saying the update period has expired or not.  Did you call support in your geographic region ? What did they say?

  Where Did you buy the update card from ? Was it a reputable dealer online or a cheap E-bay score?  If  a cheap E bay scaore, Maybe someone had a broken unit that was sent in for repairs but was found to be unwarrantable or too expensive to have repaired, so maybe Autel Good Will issued the guy with the broken unit an update credit with his remaining update period left that could be applied to another used unit picked up. Rather than replacing his broken unit with the same model unit and applying the remaining update period credit , he decided to just sell off the update credit, and you went for it hook line and sinker,

  If this was the case , just chalk it up to a learning experience. If the price sounded too good to be true,and you bought something online for $300 that reputable dealers sell for 3 times the cost  it probably has a reason. At least now  the software has some 2019 coverage now and tool works ok aside from no more online programming access for BMW, Mercedes ,and Newer SGA Chrysler access,

   Look at it this way As far as buying a single  update from StrapOn , versus a pay as you go continuous subscription, I think it is still a one time update, where all the car makes are brought up to the date of the BI-Annual release date and then from there you have 6 or 7 months of online access to, Sure trak trouble shooter, some code related connector views and data storage cloud services, and patches.