Advice for Credit Card problem please

nelsonbd

Hi,

We have just renewed my wife's car insurance and uncovered a problem. She received an email to say Axa insurance had renewed on another policy & there was a credit card transaction too. We had not used Axa for a couple of years so knew something was wrong.

It turns out that Axa had also charged us last year as well for policy we did not want/need as we were insured with someone else but we missed it when checking the credit card statement. A renewal had come through in 2013 from Axa but the Tesco Mastercard had expired according to Axa web account so my wife assumed they could not take the money and just left the policy as were with another/cheaper company.

We contacted Axa and they have refunded the transaction from this year but refused to refund for 2013 as they said it was Tesco Mastercards fault for letting the transaction through on an expired card (irony is Axa could not give us a refund for 2014 as the card had expired, until we gave them the new card details!).

I contacted Tesco Mastercard and they said it does not matter if the card has expired/blocked etc they have to honour the subscription contract and there is nothing they can do - its Axa's faulty for putting the transaction through on an expired card!

So I am stuck in the middle of Tescos & Axa each blaming each other!

Please advise
Thanks
Barry

[Deleted User]

Did you cancel the policy and the recurring transaction? If so, it's AXA's fault.

If not, it's yours. It's not Tesco's fault either way.

nelsonbd

My wife did not explicitly cancel the policy as she thought it could not proceed on a card that has expired. I never knew that you could use an expired credit card either..

Barry.

grumbler

See MSE article: Beware continuous payment authorities

McKneff

Even if they couldn't proceed on a card that had expired, they wouldn't know that your wife wanted to cancel the insurance, without someone specifically telling them.
If the transanction hadn't gone through, they would have still chased for the money, but by other means.....

nelsonbd

Thanks for link it was interesting though does not cover expired credit cards precisely..

Yes if they had chased we would have known and sorted it..

Is there any precedent for getting refunds on transactions that have gone through on expired cards? To the average person an expired Credit Card means it has expired and you would assume is not usable.

Thanks
Barry

grumbler

nelsonbd wrote: »

... though does not cover expired credit cards precisely..

Can't I just cancel my card instead?
...
When you cancel a credit card, the account remains open for a few months to ensure there aren't any as yet unprocessed payments on the card. If the retailer is still asking for the recurring payment, this will count as a new payment coming in and the card company will ask you to settle it.

And expired card is no different from a cancelled one.

And IMO "a few months" in the article is a very optimistic statement.

Zoncky

Not to sure on the credit card situation but having worked in car insurance if the actual policy wasnt needed and you can show you had alternate insurance in place (should be easy as tesco will have updated the motor insurance database), then you should just be able to cancel the policies retrospectively. The cover was never needed nor required and any incidents that may have occurred in the period would be indemnified by Tesco so Axa aren't at any financial risk.

Zoncky

Apologies mid read as you having insurance with tesco, the point still stands though. Your current insurer would have updated MID and therefore the axa policy is not required.