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Comment by artistsvoid | Hacker News Reader

I remember once seeing a commercial for an 'online virtual credit card' website/company? Quick online search tells me there are many providers out there.

As far as I know you can create virtual credit cards on the fly and use them to pay. So you could have one with which you pay your Streaming Subscription, one with which you pay for Cable, et cetera and their pitch was exactly this: You can destroy the virtual credit card and there is no fear of any fees whatsoever, so when you cancel some subscription or something...

I didn't follow up at that time, but made a mental note. Has anyone any experience with such services? It's funny that the 'fear' of cancellations not working and being charged 'unlawfully' was the main pitch in the commercial I've seen. Also funny: Cable and Mobile Phone providers are the same devils in the US than in Europe it seems ...

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Typically (in the US) the company that set up the recurring subscription that you pulled out from under them just sends your account to a collections agency. My credit card number changed and the New York Times did that to me.

So they can't charge you but will still try to 'collect' and ruin your credit rating I suppose? Well, doesn't solve a lot then.

Yes, with a service like internet you are paying for the previous months service, not the next month so the money is owed even if you cancel the credit card. Netflix bills you for the month upfront, so when you don't pay them simply remove access to the service and you owe nothing.

That’s a really interesting point. Can you think of a good reason for services like internet to be post-paid? I cannot.

Perhaps the reason they are is specifically to enable these distasteful collections practices?

I wish my ISP they would give me the option to prepay... I would

There are a few options out there and I’ll try to cover the ones I’ve used. Privacy: I’ve used this a few times for disposable cards but they act as a debit card such that withdraw from your bank. There are some goofy limits around making cards but it’s a pretty good service. Citi credit card has one that uses flash for a front end that works great but I believe they’re ending the service soon. Capital One credit card is probably the best out there and uses a chrome extension to generate cards per-website. Stripe seems be testing a solution but for third parties and BoA killed their VCC program last year.

AFAIK in the UK, Virgin Media will open a credit account in your name, which appears on your credit report. So it wouldn't matter what kind of payment you used. Although I think you can opt out of this, maybe.

In the UK you can simply cancel the direct debit (most regular payments in the UK happen using direct debit, not by credit card).

But as far as I understand not paying for a contract may result in damaged credit history, so the mortgage can become more expensive for example; or they may sell your "debt" to some collector company, who may start bothering you (I heard these stories from friends).

So because of these reasons, I decided to try to explicitly cancel the contract instead of just stopping paying them.

Makes sense ; where I come from direct debit is also widely used for such matters. Wouldn't it be awesome if when you stop paying it would simply automatically cancel the contracts within a given time period, no questions asked, no need for any 'credit rating' et cetera ... it sounds like something akin to this would be 'doable' in law? Especially with subscriptions regarding 'digital' services that are renewed on a monthly basis.

> Wouldn't it be awesome if when you stop paying it would simply automatically cancel the contracts within a given time period

It would be awesome, but the very business model of these companies relies on things not being awesome. I can imagine that a significant chunk of their revenue comes from disgruntled customers that have no choice but to pay even if they've been wronged because they don't want the hit on their credit report (even though it can be removed with enough effort).

I actually think that overall the companies probably do lose more money (in both PR/customer goodwill as well as support & debt collection costs) due to these scummy practices but too many people within the company rely on things being the way they are to get paid, so they have no incentive by themselves to improve things.

For example, allowing easy subscriptions/cancellations online would remove the need for a sales and "retentions" team as well as the multiple layers of management above them. Making contracts cancel automatically removes the need for debt collection and all the management around that and so on.

California actually has a law about this now... if you are able to sign up online, you have to be able to cancel online. I know some people who will set their locations to California, and the website will suddenly give them the option to cancel.

I dealt with Virgin's debt collectors twice and they were reasonable and actually offered better customer service than Virgin itself. When I explained them the situation and why I cancelled the payment they immediately dropped the case and I haven't heard of anything since (it's been 2 years since the first case).

Of course, you should always aim to cancel properly, but if the company is intentionally being obtuse and you've made reasonable attempts to cancel "within the rules" then just cancelling the payment is a valid option.

This is absurd and really funny, well meant advice could basically be:

'if they don't make it easy to cancel the service, just stop the payment, wait for the debt collectors, reason with them instead of your provider, they treat you better'

(I am not necessarily recommending that, but ... this speaks volumes)

Please be really careful doing this. Cancelling a payment authority is not the same as cancelling a contract, even if you have a right to do the latter under your terms. If you just stop making payments for something you do owe, you are the one in the wrong, and you can end up with a bad credit history, legal action taken against you, specialists chasing you for the debt in increasingly scary ways, etc.

Credit history and debt collection is fair, but I wonder, how does "legal action" happens considering the customer has already attempted to cancel in good faith?

How do they defend the lawsuit when the customer provides proof that they did a reasonable attempt at canceling within the rules and were stonewalled?

As long as you really have already attempted to cancel in good faith, you should be fine on all counts. The problem is a lot of people will cancel a Direct Debit or use one of these disposable card services and cancel that, and not understand that just revoking payment authority doesn't necessarily end any legal agreement they have. They will still owe the money (and potentially penalties associated with collecting it) if they don't then make some other arrangement to pay rather than terminating the legal contract properly.

https://privacy.com/ is a provider of these that I often see mentioned.

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