The Easy Way I Protect My Credit Cards Online and Keep Free Trials Free | Hacker News Reader

The Easy Way I Protect My Credit Cards Online and Keep Free Trials Free

nytimes.com

22 pointskysindi5 comments

> I recently generated a single-use card with a $1 spend limit to sign up for a free trial of Masterclass, for which I would have been automatically charged an annual membership fee of $180 if I’d forgotten to cancel on time.

Now, i understand that most businesses most likely won't bother, but theoretically, in a situation like this: What stops a business from sending you a notice about your agreed payment being late?

Unless i am missing something this isn't really all that sound advice? Why not keep a calendar with reminders?

I'll read the article if a mirror gets posted, but yeah, I've read that you can, in general, get sent to collections if your scheduled payment fails, so it may not be an effective way of avoiding one's trivial responsibility to remember to cancel. Don't know how common it is.

So it would only be necessary/ethical against merchants who would charge you without your agreement. At that point, the comparison is temp card numbers vs. normal credit card protections, not vs. nothing.

Here is a non-paywall link:

https://archive.ph/8JxDm

I use privacy.com quite often. It's a useful and good service.

But some sites that you would want to use this service for explicitly block it (e.g, Bloomberg seems to do this). There's also a small number of other sites that I've had problems with.

Sometimes the customer support is mediocre.

> But some sites that you would want to use this service for explicitly block it (e.g, Bloomberg seems to do this).

Does this still happen with the new kind of cards Privacy.com recently started issuing? https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/categories/441448782555...

It makes sense that merchants could refuse prepaid cards, but now that these are regular charge cards, I'd be surprised if the merchant agreement with the payment networks let them refuse cards arbitrarily.

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