Plus it's guaranteed to get the charge removed immediately, and you'll be hurting the company by adding to their charge-back tally, increasing payment processing costs for them and potentially completely cutting them off.
And If you are cancelling multiple subscriptions per month with regularity, then you may want to reflect and consider if you actually are committing fraud.
I am not a lawyer, but this is what happened to me.
I honestly wonder what legal theory my bank or financial service is using to justify transferring my money or incurring debt under my name to pay someone I explicitly tell them not to simply because a guy at a call center making a snap judgement believes there is a valid contract and that the other party has honored it.
But perhaps rather than suggesting that everything in a contract is always valid, maybe you are referring to DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia. And somehow that decision can be stretched to cover this case. Even so, it is clear that the call center is not acing as remotely as an arbitration court in any definition of the term because arbitration courts do have to meet some minimal legal set criterion.
So I have a counter theory: the legal theory they're using is they can do whatever they want because the consumer could never afford the legal fees to challenge them on it. And pooling resources by class action is explicitly prohibited by the above decision. So I contend no, it's not legal but it is conveniently un-enforceable now.
I didn't suggest anything like that. Rather, things in contracts are valid by default.
This isn't even a matter of onerous arbitration clauses (for disputes between the business and the consumer) being burried in fine print that no one reads. (Those have been regulated in some jurisdictions, but are mostly legal.) For credit cards, the arbitration is between the consumer and a 3rd party to the consumer's contract (the merchant), and literally is part of the value provided. People would use credit cards less if the service was discontinued.
For example:
https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/mfa/Guidelines...
Not only that, but the business will get an additional chargeback fee before losing the chargeback.
PayPal does this.
I didn't realize PayPal could dip into my checking account any time they wanted to. I thought it required my manual action. No more PayPal for me.
This is a standard procedure for many merchants these days: Offer an attractive initial price, then add fine print that states your account will autorenew at "then current" rates, and you have to make a phone call (where you have to hold for 20 to 30 minutes for the next available representative) if you want to cancel.
I am glad California is taking action. They still have a for-the-people government in California.
The only way this happens is you create a "billing agreement" when you first signup. Its a feature of Paypal that then lets sites bill more stuff to you without much in terms of prompting. Its useful because services like Steam use it to avoid prompting users over and over again to login but other sites use it....because they can. Problem is its not very obvious to perhaps the majority of users they are creating a billing agreement.
You can terminate these agreements any time in the paypal site. But you have to do it yourself as otherwise it'll just sit there indefinitely.
The account numbers aren't even secret, they're written on the bottom of every check!
I use examples from a bad embezzlement in my pitch deck. Checks are a joke.
EBay did this to me once, I think this is an American thing, doesn't happen here in Canada like that.
If someone has your bank account number they can withdraw money from it. For example the errands bank account authentication mechanism is to withdraw some money from your account, and then ask you how much they took. I honestly could not believe it.
It gets better: if you have someone’s bank account number you still cannot transfer money to them. It would literally be easier to tell your bank (say etrade or whatever) that it was your bank account.
That’s why all these absurd abank payment systems exist in America. The act of just giving someone money is incredibly hard.
> bank account authentication mechanism is to withdraw some money from your account, and then ask you how much they took
In my experience, it is usually the reverse - they put a small sum there, and then withdraw it back after auth. But the end result is the same, of course (except if you have less than $1 on your account).
> if you have someone’s bank account number you still cannot transfer money to them
That's indeed weird, because I see no technical reason (at least with my knowledge about ACH - btw HN had recently a couple of nice articles about it) why that would not be possible, but my bank only allows me to transfer money to my accounts. No idea why. Maybe some legal stuff?
OTOH there are apps like venmo which make it easier.
In the US you give them /your/ bank account, and /they/ initiate the withdrawal. Anyone with your account details can pay for something from your account, including to a service they can withdraw from.
Better yet fraud insurance covers credit cards, not debit or “cheque”. Specifically: if someone uses your bank a/c# you are responsible for recovering the money.
Looks like you've missed the "or have an agreement with a bank".
> if someone uses your bank a/c# you are responsible for recovering the money.
I do not think this is true. Of course credit card fraud liability policy only covers the credit card, but there are rules about bank transfers. My reading of https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/4A/part_2 is that the customer is liable for the payment only if it is authorized and passes "commercially reasonable" security procedure. If somebody just gets you bank account number, it's clearly not an authorized payment (unless they make it look authorized, i.e. by stealing your identity or passwords, etc.) and you will not be liable for it.
That is crazy! I remember Paypal doing the opposite in the UK, they made 2 or 3 tiny deposits and asked how much they were.
I followed eBay's "Buyer protection" to the letter...and guess what? I wasn't covered...even after escalating -- and saying, "They have my money and I still don't have my product, I'm trying to understand which part of 'Buyer Protection' I am missing here."
I called my credit card company, explained what was going on, and had my money back in 3 minutes.
Chargebacks are great, whenever they are used effectively...and ebay/paypal is the devil.