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Comment by brianhorakh | Hacker News Reader

This is awful. I've canceled subscriptions so many times only to get billed again, and again, blabla "it's a bug in the billing system" run around.

So now vendors can keep auto billing with dark patterns such as unnavigable automated phone lines, and visa is going to take their side? (because the merchant will have proof of billing history?)

I hope Amex doesn't adopt these rules. I am going to think strongly about canceling my visa cards as a response.

Bitrix24 a SaaS crm/VoIP service was the worst abuser I can recall (kept randomly reappearing a $10.00 months after id asked visa to block them). Free Trial My ass.

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I totally agree. Chargebacks are one of the few tools consumers have to fight back against shady companies. I think I've only done one or two chargebacks in my life, but I have threatened them other times when dealing with dishonest companies, which usually leads to them suddenly resolving an "impossible" issue.

If Visa ends up crippling this ability there's no chance I'll use their cards again.

> If Visa ends up crippling this ability there's no chance I'll use their cards again.

Curious how this makes other options more competitive. If liberal dispute policies are one of the value props of using a CC, and merchants eat the fees, the value of using a CC declines if dispute resolution is tightened up making it closer to parity of irreversible funds transfers (although there is still the float component not yet solved for in the financial UX of most financial service providers).

https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-fednow

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32098635

It also use by customers to get what they want.

Just yesterday, a guest called and asked to return 3rd night stay because it was more than the 2nd night room rate. Guest booked the room online and had a confirmation email with a daily rate, signed a physical registration card that shows daily rate during check in but insisted that we are overcharging him. He thretened us with a chargeback.

I returned the money because fighting chargeback is a losing battle for us.

They booked 8 rooms as a group, and I basically told him, that they are not welcome here next year and he should explained that to his group why we won't let them stay. Also told him, I am going to call everyone in his group and tell them not to book at our location.

---

A couple weeks ago, bank called and wanted to verify the charge. Bank wanted to know if the charge was valid. I told them it was charged through chip reader, and I have a video of the guest using the card. She is like, thats all I need. I m going to deny the chargeback.

A lot of guest book room, and when they forget to cancel they use chargeback.

Look into b4checkin for collecting payments. Should offer more proof of card owner’s consent in the transaction amount than most hotel brand companies’ half baked 30 year old PMS. The franchising company will not care because their cut is a portion of top line revenue, and chargeback loss is all on the hotel.

https://b4checkin.com/

Why are the room rates so highly variable in the first place? Your guest sounds like a total jerk, no doubt. Hotels have also been quick to adopt the nickel-and-dime-customers-to-death business strategy, which adds up to a pretty big ding for folks paying out of pocket.

From a customer perspective, it feels like a stingy, one-sided relationship with all the hidden fees for what should be a relatively simple arrangement.

Still not defending your idiot customer who couldn't be bothered to read the presumably clear and well-intentioned agreement they signed.

Because A: Demand is highly variable and B: Costs and capacity aren't.

Lots of hotel stays I do have non-uniform rates-- e.g. different weekend and weekday rates, cheaper rate for first day, cheaper rate past a certain length of stay... But basically all confirmations have clearly showed me my total charge and average daily rate-- and it's never really mattered to me that some of the days cost different amounts than other ones.

> Why are the room rates so highly variable in the first place?

A lot of reasons but mostly due to demand and supply. We are mostly busy on the weekends (Fri/Sat). Weekends rates will be higher than weekdays. If the majority of the rooms are booked 6 months in advance, rate will be higher for those days. Not having enough housekeepers to clean the rooms, increase the rate so that we have less rooms to clean.

> Hotels have also been quick to adopt the nickel-and-dime-customers-to-death business strategy

I would say, not really. Look at the hospitality reits. They have lowest returns compare to other reits.

Variable pricing is always because supply and demand are constantly in motion.

I see a sign on the Taco Bell advertising a $4 per hour premium ($21 per hour) for people who are willing to work late night and will stay to close the place up. I see a possibility of restaurants charging more for food at 11pm rather than 1pm. Which already happens at many places via discounts for “lunch specials” available only during noon hours.

Same reason for hotels to charge different prices for different nights.

You can throw in price discrimination / price segmentation and collect different prices from different people for the room night. Similar to how retail businesses give a lower price to people willing to spend their time finding coupons.

I haven't had to do a chargeback, but it's the only reason I have a credit card. Visa just flushed all their value, in my eyes, down the toilet. Reward programs and fancy priority lines don't mean squat if I can't leverage the power of my creditor when fighting fraud or unfair transactions.

On the other hand, my Discover card has been my go to for as long as I've had a card.

I think if you can prove that you tried to cancel and the merchant screwed up you should be fine. Hopefully you have a paper trail of them admitting its a “bug in Billings”.

Aside: One of the best things about AMEX is their customer support around chargebacks and I agree I hope they stay super friendly to this.

I switched back to Amex despite them offering worse rewards than my other card because of this.

Other card: I returned an item, with proof of delivery via UPS tracking. Never got a refund. Opened a dispute. Weeks later, the dispute was resolved in the merchant's favor despite the merchant providing nothing as evidence except the original receipt. I had to call the help line, deal with several uncomprehending service reps until one of them re-opened the dispute, asking me to resubmit the same documents I submitted the first time! Finally the dispute was resolved in my favor a month later.

Amex: I ordered some items from a local store to be delivered and the order was cancelled without my money being refunded. I received an email with a few questions, which I answered. A few weeks later the dispute was resolved in my favor.

I still need to carry another card because some merchants don't accept Amex, but I use the Amex for everything I possibly can. I'm giving up some cash back rewards to do so, and I'm also paying an annual fee, but that's a small price to pay for getting better service when something goes wrong.

Amex Gold is pretty decent for travel rewards (4x for food/groceries) and amex points are ranked pretty well for value by the points guy (https://thepointsguy.com/guide/amex-points-value/) - certainly structured differently than cash back but free travel with a year or two of normal expenses isn't too bad a deal

In the past few years the concept of "travel" has become a bit more difficult. I decided I'd rather have the simplicity of cash back instead.

So what you're saying is that the vendors will now strive to make it harder to "prove you tried to cancel", just like they're already striving to make it harder to cancel.

Send an email to legal@company.com or ceo@company.com or any known-good generic email they have with a note saying “route this to legal”if the normal gui or CUstomer Support team doesn’t work. I’ve heard investor relations is always a good address that’s monitored by people that have spare time. You have now officially provided a written notice to company. If it’s a really big charge or something serious, send a certified letter. That means the US government is now testifying to the time and date of them receiving letter.

Share that with Visa and see if that changes their opinion on the chargeback.

Be polite, not emotional. Don’t threaten a lawyer or use any language you’d see on a TV legal show. If you’re in California feel free to cite their violation of this law [1]. Don’t threaten to sue. Don’t threaten a lawyer. Just mention that you have the right and you can’t use the UI as expected. If it’s bad you can say something like “if this isn’t resolved I may avail myself of other options afforded by $LAW”. Don’t specify what, don’t threaten they’ll regret it. Just let them know you are someone who is serious and non emotional.

“Company X,

I have tried to cancel this service but I am unable to due to X. After talking with CS they said it was due to $Bug. I talked with $Person at $Date. Let this serve as a formal notice that I will no longer be paying for service and no longer wish to be charged. I will be instructing Visa to reject further charges after $new_future_date.

Please Acknowledge Reciept of this notice.

Signed Person.

Todays Date is X”

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/04/californias-new-online-can...

> After talking with CS they said it was due to $Bug.

Customer support will be (/is) trained to never say such a thing, then.

Also, you are normalizing the idea that customers can be forced to jump through arbitrary hoops; you've just invented one yourself. I'd much rather have this behavior be illegal (see recent FTC ruling).

Oh I’d prefer it be illegal too. See point about the California law. This is a good thing.

Illegal or not, it happens and my comment was what to do if/when it happens. The parent was someone complaining that they had a “billing bug” that they tried to charge back.

I wish everyone was nicer to consumers and not shareholders, but if you want your money back while you petition for new laws. sometimes you have to jump through hoops.

Meanwhile Amex sided with an Australian airline that cancelled flights due to covid, despite the airline being in the news as in financial strife and going into administration.

How do you prove to Visa's satisfaction that you called to cancel, for example?

Hard copy sent via registered mail? There's probably a service for this.

Ask them what they want as proof?

I think a certified mail to legal of the company (and a reasonable period of time for them to correct) is probably a good start.

If they actually tell you the bill was a mistake, that should definitely be proof.

I never use Amex because they're the only card that has denied me a chargeback. Basically the hotel runs a nice little scam and Amex enables it. They seem to be very shy about accepting chargebacks to hotels.

The scam was that you'd book a cancellable room and the hotel would cancel your booking after they accepted it due to "unavailability of the room" (wtf), then rebook an identical "alternative" room "at the cheapest rate" which happens to be an uncancellable room at $1 less.

Why? Because they are impossible to find. No taxi driver can find them. Maybe don't exist. By the time you find this out you can't cancel the room.

This is why I use capital ones service to create a new number for every vendor (similar to privacy.com) then I can just turn off that card once I cancel the service

which service is this? Do you have a link?

It is part of their eno service

https://www.capitalone.com/digital/eno/virtual-card-numbers/

Wise (wise.com, formerly Transfer Wise) now let you create virtual credit cards. Accounts with them seem to be available to most of the planet.

Citi offers virtual numbers too. Mercury does too. And many others.

Privacy dot com. It's the only thing I use for anything that's not a major player (Amazonish). It's saved me a lot of time and hassle. Cancel the account and the card at the same time.

Are you comfortable with the recent change in Privacy.com ?

They are using Patriot Bank out of North Dakota as an intermediary. Previously Privacy.com would directly debit from your checking account. In the new process you are signing up for a credit card with Patriot Bank under the hood. They pass on your checking account info to Patriot Bank and somehow money gets exchanged. I don't fully understand the process and don't trust men-in-the-middle like this.

I wasn't satisfied with the information I got from Privacy.com customer service. Has anyone researched this and confirmed there are no shenanigans in the new process. I used to use Privacy for many years but stopped because of this.

What specifically is your concern about that new process?

Old process: Me -> Privacy.com -> My checking account

New process: Me -> Privacy.com -> Patriot Bank credit account -> My checking account.

My concern is I am forced to sign up for Patriot Bank credit services. Also Patriot Bank gets my checking account information.

I actually use a bastion bank account so privacy and patriot never get my real one. I push money to the bastion bank and if they do something funky, my exposure is limited.

Was this part of the big change they did a few months ago to use credit card numbers that vendors can't see as temporary / prepaid? I'm not sure about what you're describing, but it's been substantially more useful to me since that change.

Sounds like it. They would have to have a "traditional" credit card account to not show up as prepaid on the system.

I'd never heard of privacy.com, but it looks fantastic. And the $10/mo Pro plan is effectively free if you push $12k worth of eligible transactions through them per year (they are a little weak on defining "eligible", though).

I'd be a little concerned about them knowing about pretty much all of my purchases, though, and how they handle that data, and what they do with it, so more research required...

Hmm, also it sounds like they charge fees when your funding source is a "real" credit card, and not a bank account. That isn't really useful for me, as I rely on credit card rewards for a bunch of stuff, and I imagine the fees they'd charge would wipe out those benefits. But this could certainly be useful for buying something from a one-off merchant where I'm not sure if I can trust them, and in that case the free plan should be enough.

Yeah, I only use the free plan and I go though a bastion bank account for that, so my exposure is limited. I do miss out on rewards, but in general, I feel the trade off is worth it, especially with one off purchases.

Cancellation is not always easy. Any “recurring” charge will helpfully reopen your closed account. I guess it’s better to just use prepaid gift cards for subscriptions.

It cuts both ways. You could make a very strong argument that "friendly fraud" is the single reason that the porn industry is having to turn to crypto. Husbands are frequently caught by their spouses and, while pretending that the charge was fraudulent, commit "friendly fraud" themselves.

I, for one, am very happy to see Visa taking steps against this. We've kvetched for years over how how much power payment processors have in the system and now they're finally doing something about it (themselves, to boot!).

And with this single change Visa just ensured that no one other than Apple and Google has a chance of making a significant dent App Store fees.

www.privacy.com

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