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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

The biggest issue here is that the "proof" allowed essentially means recurring billing scams can run rampant without any recourse. Unfortunately a significant amount of "businesses" online and offline are forms of recurrent billing scams. Chargebacks are the /only/ protection consumers have against this form of scam, other than going to court at their own expense.

This GREATLY weakens consumer protections for basically no upside by enabling bad actor merchants. End of story.

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> bad actor merchants

It's even worse than this——"reputable" merchants will start acting even worse.

Here's an experiment you can do right now: go to WSJ.com and buy a subscription (instant). Now try to cancel. No button to do so. So start a Support Chat. Clearly type that you want to cancel. You are directed to call a phone number. So now you have to spend anywhere from 5 - 60 minutes on the phone. I tried to do a charge back on my Amex after I experienced this, and was denied.

This is the Wall Street Journal doing dark patterns and getting away with it. Imagine what will happen if credit card companies make it easier for merchants to do stuff like this.

It’s not setup nicely but that is not what a chargeback is for. You ordered a service and got it, you do have to pay for it.

Yup, someone just posted about TeamViewer's version of this scam a few hours ago:

"30 days before your subscription expires, teamviewer send you a friendly email to remind you to that your subscription expires in 30 days and to be sure to renew before then in order to not lose service. What that email does not tell you is that unless you cancel your subscription at least 30 days (ie on that very day) before your sub expires they will renew you automatically and demand a full year's subscription under threat of legal proceedings..." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32164897

All -- it’s a good idea for your card(s) to be “stolen”, maybe once every year or two. And yes, it is definitely “stolen”, and not lost. Reps will definitely ask this. If it is lost (which it isn’t), the “thieves” may be able to continue to charge your card number.

This is a cleansing process.

Sometimes card issuers will 'helpfully' send the updated card details to the recurring charge merchant.

The pretext for this change by Visa is that some cardholders are making false claims to the card company.

This "stolen" sounds like it might be a different kind of false claim.

Can consumers operate while maintaining impeccable high ground?

As long as merchants use dark ui patterns, a misleading or anti-merchant response from consumers is justified.

I for one am appalled that visa is making merchant fraud easier, making payments less controlled by cardholders.

That's like, to me, why can't my bank/credit card block charges from a merchant? (Or make you jump through repeated hoops to do so).

I've heard banks tell me "well, you signed a contract with them, so we need to let the charges go through", or the "for your convenience"...

No, my bank has a fiduciary duty to me. If blocking a charge causes me to get into conflict with the merchant, that's between the merchant and I - my bank shouldn't be taking any "side" (and if they do, it should be mine).

> The biggest issue here is that the "proof" allowed essentially means recurring billing scams can run rampant without any recourse.

Yup, every gym and pest control company just got aroused thinking about all the recurring charges they could now slip in.

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