Hi Robert, the people you contacted are a third party support group " not Avast " free help can be found right here on this forum.
Defender cannot be removed as it's part of windows ( unless you are using Windows XP in which case Defender can be removed ),as for the safe zone issue please be patient and someone who uses this feature should be along before to long to possibly answer your questions.
"Note" please remove you email address otherwise it'll be harvested by the spammers