Payment authorized on a cancelled card?

gazareth

Hi all

Around this time last year I took out a roadside recovery policy with the AA. I think I paid for it using my new Amazon Mastercard, which I took out just for the £15 voucher deal.

In June/July, or whenever it was that Amazon announced that they were ditching the Amazon-branded cards, I phoned up and cancelled the card.

My AA policy was automatically renewed 10 days ago, using the same payment card. I cannot be 100% sure it was the Amazon card that was used, but nothing is showing up on my online statements for any of my other cards. The AA can't tell me the card number for obvious reasons. The Amazon card site is not loading just now.

I asked the AA if I could have a refund as that would clearly be the simplest way to resolve it, but they charge £20 (!) admin fee for a refund, even inside the 14 day cooling off period. The renewal fee is £49, so it's really not worth doing.

So, it appears that the payment was authorized to my card despite my cancelling it several months ago. Where do I stand with this?

rb10

If you authorise a company to take money through a Continuous Payment Authority (i.e. a year ago, you gave them permission to debit your card now, and annually until you cancel the policy), then the payment will go through if it is to a cancelled card.

It would be best to contact Amazon's credit card people, to see if they can see a payment on that closed account, and to pay it off. I am not sure whether you would contact MBNA (who now run Amazon's credit cards) or Bank of Scotland (who used to run them, and probably did so at the time you opened yours).

gazareth

Thanks. It's slightly complicated by the fact that I have no idea what my card number is. I'm hoping that Amazon's online portal will come back up and that my login will still work...

YorkshireBoy

gazareth wrote: »

The AA can't tell me the card number for obvious reasons.

If it's anything like my RAC policy they'll tell you the last 4 digits of the card number on the renewal letter, ie xxxx xxxx xxxx 6782.

You've learned a valuable lesson here. When the renewal document comes though...read it!

gazareth

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

If it's anything like my RAC policy they'll tell you the last 4 digits of the card number on the renewal letter, ie xxxx xxxx xxxx 6782.

You've learned a valuable lesson here. When the renewal document comes though...read it!

I read it and thought "I must remember to phone them up and cancel, I'm sure I can get it cheaper than £49 elsewhere"... and promptly forgot about it until I found the letter under a pile of paperwork on my desk! I won't do that again. Sadly the renewal letter doesn't give any clues either.

gazareth

After some Colombo-esque detective work, I managed to figure out the last 4 digits of my old Amazon card, and got the AA to confirm that they used that card for the payment.

I phoned Halifax, who told me that the AA had charged me £49, but that it had been charged back to them the day after.

I phoned the AA for a third time, and was informed that the previous two people had misinformed me. In summary, because technically the AA don't have my £49, I can cancel this year's policy with no penalty or admin fee and have just signed up for an RAC policy for £28 + £20 Quidco cashback. If only the first two AA call centre staff with whom I dealt had been on the ball, I would have been spared a rather stressful morning :rotfl:

RhinoSimon

gazareth wrote: »

If only the first two AA call centre staff with whom I dealt had been on the ball, I would have been spared a rather stressful morning :rotfl:

Or, if only you had managed the issue better then the call centre staff would not have been involved in the first place!:rolleyes:

gazareth

RhinoSimon wrote: »

Or, if only you had managed the issue better then the call centre staff would not have been involved in the first place!:rolleyes:

I made a mistake. But then again I am not being paid to make sure that I am correct and giving the correct info to customers, so I think I am perfectly justified to have a moan about the AA's call centre staff.

RhinoSimon

fair point well made

Moggles_2

I phoned Halifax, who told me that the AA had charged me £49, but that it had been charged back to them the day after.

It sounds as though you've had a narrow escape, thanks to the Hally.

Other forum users have been less fortunate. Having moved house after cancelling their credit card, the first some hear about the continuous payments charged to the closed account, is a letter from a debt collection agency.

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

AA subscription, AOL, McAfee, CPP (Identity protection insurance etc), National Homestudy, Natureberry, Norton Anti-virus, RAC, Sentinel, Sky, Virgin Media and Vistaprint, as many have found out the hard way.