Continuous Payments Authority

le_loup

Interesting article from the Guardian that contradicts all that I and this website thought they knew about Continuous Payments:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/feb/24/continuous-payments-authority-know-your-rights

jalexa

le_loup wrote: »

Interesting article from the Guardian that contradicts all that I and this website thought they knew about Continuous Payments

Good post.

Another poster ahead of the MSE curve.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1829665

meer53

This information is at complete odds with how banks deal with CPA's at the moment. It's a huge mess and needs sorting out.

Visa regulations (which is how card issuers claim back these payments) state that in order to action a chargeback, the cardholder "must" be able to confirm that they have "attempted" to cancel their agreement with the retailer. If banks start disputing transactions where the agreement is still live, they'll just be rejected by Visa.

Until Visa International and the regulatory bodies get together, i can't see anything changing. It's quite simple really, read ALL the T & C's before handing your card details over, make sure you know what you're signing up for, and when you want to cancel, make sure you contact the retailer to let them know.

jalexa

meer53 wrote: »

It's a huge mess and needs sorting out.

I can see your point and recognise the obvious "difficulty" imposed on the bank.

Two things however, Regulations are regulations and it's not for the customer to sort the mess out.

savagej

Indeed, there is legislation in place and fact the banks don't like it, don't want to have to spend money on staff training to fix the problem and on writing additional computer code so that a CPA can be stopped is not the customers problem. That is up to the bank to sort out and as I said in another thread the law supercedes the Visa/Mastercard regs. I think things will be changed in future once pressure is put on banks through sites such as this educating people to their rights. The banks are not slow in realising the power of the consumer once they know their legal rights.

After all the fair terms contract law was in place a long time before anyone started using it to take the banks to court on mass to reclaim penalty charges.

chattychappy

This seems like a fuss about nothing to me. Nothing new.

You give authority to the merchant, payments get taken.
You cancel with the merchant = no more authority.
More transactions? = unauthorised. Dispute with CC.

Cancelling authority shouldn't be difficult. It's not something you need to "agree" with the merchant. It's just something you communicate, by whatever means.

Doesn't mean you can cancel their service. That's down to the contract. But you can cancel the authority.

Now CCs are quick to say you must cancel with the merchant. People phone them up thinking they are like DDs. But they are not. If you have cancelled the authority, then they the CC has no business telling you there is nothing that they can do.

IF there really is no way of contacting the merchant - well I can see a difficulty there. It would be unfair to hold a CC holder to an authority in such a case. But somehow I think that is rarer than people might make out.