McAfee Changes Credit Card Expiry Date to ensure Auto-Renewal

js1402

I have just discovered that companies are allowed to change the expiry date of the credit card info they hold on you to ensure auto-renew payments go through.

The scenario I faced was that I had a McAfee Anti-Spam subscription which McAfee automatically added to its auto-renew feature. (If you want to manually renew, you have to jump through hoop city but that's another story). When I checked the credit card details registered on my McAfee account, I noticed that the expiry date was before the last unwanted auto-renewal. McAfee had taken it upon itself to amend the expiry date on the credit card record they hold of me internally to 2021! This can be clearly seen on the order form they generated for this renewal.

Looking on the web, it seems that there is an informal arrangement between credit card issuers and large companies that enables this to happen.

Companies need to publicise this practice - as more and more shopping takes place online, more and more people will be caught with this CPA-related revenue generating 'strategy'.

John

Paul_Herring

Companies need to publicise this practice - as more and more shopping takes place online, more and more people will be caught with this CPA-related revenue generating 'strategy'.

Um - this is a CPA - why are you complaining? Even if they didn't update the expiry date, they could still take payment from your card. You've given them permission to take the money, and they're allowed to continue doing so until they acknowledge an explicit cancellation from you. Allowing the card details they have to expire won't cancel the CPA.

Moggles_2

Welcome to MSE!

McAfee is well known for this, unfortunately.

A reputable company should make this clear, but particular care is needed whenever you use a debit or credit card to pay for a continuous service where recurring payments (such as insurance premiums for instance) are required.

FYI, and anyone else reading, the following companies seem rather keen on CPAs, but slow to cancel agreements:

AA subscription, AOL, McAfee, CPP insurance (Identity protection etc), National Homestudy, Natureberry, Norton Anti virus, RAC, Sky, Virgin Media, Vistaprint

Eydon

If a merchant is set up with their acquiring bank (i.e. the one who processes their payments for them) as a merchant that can take recurring transactions (or continuous payment authorities) then the expiry date of the card is almost useless. The backend system at the card issuing bank (i.e. the one that issued your card to you) will recognise the transaction as a CPA and ignore the expiry date altogether. Merchants could even enter a particular "dummy" expiry date.

At least that's how it used to work back when I worked for a very large credit card company.