Apple taken money without permission - advice desperately needed

Hermia

I was very suprised to get my credit card bill today to find that Apple had taken £68 from my account. Last year I signed up for their .mac account, but haven't used it since I got my new computer. So, I went and signed into my .mac account which I haven't accessed for months. Guess what, I found three emails in there. One saying would you like to join up for another year, the second saying we tried to process your order but your credit card has expired, the third saying thank you for giving us your new credit card details.

I am utterly confused. I obviously never replied to any of the original emails saying I wanted a new account. I also never gave them my new credit card details. I have not visited the Apple site for months. I did buy a song from the iTunes store last month so they could have got the details from there.

I just wondered if anyone can give me any advice about that I can do. My worries are:

1) How can I prove I didn't sign up for the account?
2) Are companies allowed to get your credit card details from another part of the company?

ben500

Hermia wrote:

I was very suprised to get my credit card bill today to find that Apple had taken £68 from my account. Last year I signed up for their .mac account, but haven't used it since I got my new computer. So, I went and signed into my .mac account which I haven't accessed for months. Guess what, I found three emails in there. One saying would you like to join up for another year, the second saying we tried to process your order but your credit card has expired, the third saying thank you for giving us your new credit card details.

I am utterly confused. I obviously never replied to any of the original emails saying I wanted a new account. I also never gave them my new credit card details. I have not visited the Apple site for months. I did buy a song from the iTunes store last month so they could have got the details from there.

I just wondered if anyone can give me any advice about that I can do. My worries are:


1) How can I prove I didn't sign up for the account?

Ask them to send verification of your order for you to examine
2) Are companies allowed to get your credit card details from another part of the company?

Definately not this is a breach of the data protection act

I would email them immediately and ask for the proof, if you are positive that you have done nothing to reinstall the account you should also contact your credit card company and inform them this is an unauthorised debit and request a refund.

Hermia

Thank you for your answer. I have emailed them and requested verification of the order as well as a DETAILED explanation of how these events occurred and where they got my credit card details from.

I am SO angry because I am a loyal Mac fan and can't beileve they have done this.

Matt83UK_2

There is probably one central account (like a MSN premium services, or other services like 1 click, Yahoo [manage my premium services] etc..) whereby there is one central store of your credit card details. When you purchased an iTune, it must have updated this central store of your CC details. And as you said you seen the emails from apple trying to collect this money for the second year (i.e. you would have agreed to auto-renewal), i.e. it wouldn't have been passed, you sign into iTunes with the same credentials presumably. All this sharing etc.. would have been in the T&C or other agreements.

In future you should cancel agreements before they auto-renew, and in this case, you even choose not to do that after seeing the emails, in theory they could probably of chased you for the debt via other means if CC had continued to fail. You have to explicitly cancel these things (rather than presuming they can't touch you anymore), just like everything else, e.g. you can't cancel your gym membership by cancelling the direct debit, they'll eventually come after you for the arrears. Not using the service is no excuse, I haven't been the gym for over 2 months, I haven't watched anything on Sky for a while, but I cancel the direct debit or change my CC, I'd expect them to still want the money, they've provisioned the service regardless.

In the case above, it would have been all automated, best to contact them and explain and get a pro-rata refund. You could probably chargeback since you haven't phyiscally signed anything, but Apple haven't done anything wrong so it's more an ethical decision on your part.

Hermia

Oh right, that's interesting. I just find it strange because I set up a completely new account when I got my new computer with a different email address, account name and credit card. It obviously didn't worry them that all my details were different apart from my name.

ben500

Matt83UK wrote:

There is probably one central account (like a MSN premium services, or other services like 1 click, Yahoo [manage my premium services] etc..) whereby there is one central store of your credit card details. When you purchased an iTune, it must have updated this central store of your CC details. And as you said you seen the emails from apple trying to collect this money for the second year (i.e. you would have agreed to auto-renewal), i.e. it wouldn't have been passed, you sign into iTunes with the same credentials presumably. All this sharing etc.. would have been in the T&C or other agreements.

In future you should cancel agreements before they auto-renew, and in this case, you even choose not to do that after seeing the emails, in theory they could probably of chased you for the debt via other means if CC had continued to fail. You have to explicitly cancel these things (rather than presuming they can't touch you anymore), just like everything else, e.g. you can't cancel your gym membership by cancelling the direct debit, they'll eventually come after you for the arrears. Not using the service is no excuse, I haven't been the gym for over 2 months, I haven't watched anything on Sky for a while, but I cancel the direct debit or change my CC, I'd expect them to still want the money, they've provisioned the service regardless.

In the case above, it would have been all automated, best to contact them and explain and get a pro-rata refund. You could probably chargeback since you haven't phyiscally signed anything, but Apple haven't done anything wrong so it's more an ethical decision on your part.

I think we will have to differ on this subject, I don't know where you get your information from but I think you'll find that they have no right or reason whatsover to transfer such data between two separate entities within an organsiation in this manner for this purpose.

Matt83UK_2

It's not taken from two seperate entities, both entities are likely to share/feed the same billing database, it seems tacty and redundant to have multiple billing databases and departments for dealing for such. Look at Yahoo! any premium services and you'll see these are centrally managed.

Matt83UK_2

Oh right, that's interesting. I just find it strange because I set up a completely new account when I got my new computer with a different email address, account name and credit card.

Okay fair enough, my theory isn't applicable to this instance tho, but beware with other services such should happen, and you NEED to cancel explicitly any auto-renewing agreement in general.

I have no idea how they could charge you then.