Continuing Authority - DANGER!

HelpWhereIcan

Megalomaniac wrote: »

You must be on hold for quite some time to type all that out! What happened in the end? I remember signing up to AOL for one month's free internet, and my dad realised he was still being charged 9 months later. When I rung up, as the account was under my name but his card, they said even though I hadn't used it, they could only reimburse 6 months because that was the longest records they had on their screen.

I reckon AOL is probably one of the worst for this, as they were one of the only companies offering free dial up internet for a month at the time, and everyone was joining the internet revolution. I wonder how many others are also still paying it!

The 'end' result (after having being cut off and going through the whole process again) is that I have been given 12 months back and have the name and address of the VP of Membership to write to and put my complaint to.

I felt a bit better after coming off the phone to the 'management support' team - but mainly cos I managed to politely grind him down until he admitted that he agreed with me but that no-one other than this VP has the authority to issue more than a 12 month refund.

Will be putting together a letter explaining my disappointment that I had been told nothing more could be refunded despite their logs showing that the last time the account was accessed was September 2002.

I had a laugh when he told me that I could have been keeping my off peak dial up plan as a way of accessing the internet from my laptop while away from the home.

He conceded that my mobile data card may offer better value and connection speeds more conveniently. Have to hand it to him that he tried really hard to convince me it had been worth paying for.

ps646566

FlyHigh wrote: »

Nope, whether the card is reported is reported lost / stolen / closed or anything else if you give a company authorization to take payments continuously then they will do exactly that! The payments will still leave your account. The banks can only dispute the payments if you prove you've tried your hardest to cancel these services.

I'm not sure about that.

I recently had my card defrauded (customer not present). The card was cancelled and the money refunded. A new card arrived with the advice to notify anyone who is entitled to regular payments from it. Sure enough, one legitimate outlet to whom I pay a monthly subscription contacted me by e-mail to say that they were unable to take the payment, so would I please advise a new payment arrangement.

When the card is replaced, the new card has a new number, for obvious reasons. I don't see how anyone not knowing the new number can get a transaction authorised. If they can, then surely the whole purpose of replacing the card with a new number is lost. Only if the card issuer matches the old and new numbers on the retailer's behalf can the transaction be authorised. If card issuers are doing that then they are in the wrong and should be reported to the FSA.

Martin's article talks about cancelling the credit card, but he does not specifically refer to destroying the card and reporting it lost. In the latter case the issuer has to cancel the card (subject of course to it demanding payment for any balance owing to it) because of the risk of fraud. This might be considered unethical on the part of the customer. But it's not so unethical as someone taking payments even after you've told them to stop, and this may be the only way. Having said that, of course anyone giving their credit card details to anything remotely connected with internet !!!!!! is M-A-D MAD, and deserves little sympathy.

King_Of_Fools

ps646566 wrote: »

I'm not sure about that.

I recently had my card defrauded (customer not present). The card was cancelled and the money refunded. A new card arrived with the advice to notify anyone who is entitled to regular payments from it. Sure enough, one legitimate outlet to whom I pay a monthly subscription contacted me by e-mail to say that they were unable to take the payment, so would I please advise a new payment arrangement.

When the card is replaced, the new card has a new number, for obvious reasons. I don't see how anyone not knowing the new number can get a transaction authorised. If they can, then surely the whole purpose of replacing the card with a new number is lost. Only if the card issuer matches the old and new numbers on the retailer's behalf can the transaction be authorised. If card issuers are doing that then they are in the wrong and should be reported to the FSA.

Martin's article talks about cancelling the credit card, but he does not specifically refer to destroying the card and reporting it lost. In the latter case the issuer has to cancel the card (subject of course to it demanding payment for any balance owing to it) because of the risk of fraud. This might be considered unethical on the part of the customer. But it's not so unethical as someone taking payments even after you've told them to stop, and this may be the only way. Having said that, of course anyone giving their credit card details to anything remotely connected with internet !!!!!! is M-A-D MAD, and deserves little sympathy.

It depends on the retailer. In your case they obviously did not have a CCA set up and so could not authorise a new charge against your old card number.

However, if a company has a CCA on the old number that has pre-authorised any future payments against the account not the card so they could continue to charge you for as long as they want.

ps646566

Interesting. So may take out is that reporting the card as lost is always worth a try, but may not work.

I assume that the customer must have originally authorised the CCA, albeit unwittingly, for future charges to be accepted by the credit card company. I guess the caveat is that wherever buying something that can be construed as ongoing (subscriptions etc) one should read the t&c fully (zzzzzzzzz), and not enter into it with a credit or debit card if a CCA is involved, unless the you know that the merchant concerned has impeccable credentials.

Better to do it wherever possible with a direct debit, because you can stop that when you want. If the merchant won't agree to direct debit, then maybe its indicative of something fishy.