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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

> Temporary credit cards With privacy.com, Revolut, Klarna, and similar services one can generate virtual credit cards. This is mostly for when you don't trust the website owner or the payment provider.

There are other reasons, unless you construe "trust" very broadly. Services that make it unreasonably difficult to cancel your account: you just cancel their credit card (and of course stop using the service).

You can also force an annual renewal, to prevent them from automatically renewing you.

And lastly, you can set a dollar limit on it, to avoid mistakes and "automatic" increases.

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> you just cancel their credit card (and of course stop using the service).

IANAL, but I have always heard that when you do this you have not broken the legal contract obligating your payment. In practice, especially for modestly priced services, the strategy will usually work. But in theory they could come after you legally for the money if you do this. It might be a real concern for very expensive services.

I would like to have this confirmed by a lawyer, though.

Merchants can apparently do a "force post". Privacy.com's help page [1] says:

> Broadly speaking, merchants only resort to force posts when they are faced with the potential for serious loss as a result of fraud. For instance, if you rent a car and don't return it, having a limit on a card or closing the card does not absolve you of the responsibility to return or pay for the car, and the merchant can force post the charge.

[1] https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012288214-F...

Asking a lawyer if there's a risk is like asking a barber if you need a haircut.

AFAICT, here's what actually happens if your credit card is declined. I'd love to have someone who works on that type of software correct me:

They send you an email saying, "please update your payment information." Because this happens every day. Hey, sometimes the restaurant tells you your credit card was declined, when it's perfectly good.

That email is followed by another, saying your account is suspended. At that point, they might give you an option to cancel, OR they might forward you to the same impenetrable UI that led you to do this in the first place.

In any case, you'll most likely be cancelled with no further repercussions. Yes, bad things could happen, but they don't. YMMV.

This always comes up when I mention privacy.com. It's always a theoretical possibility. No one's ever shown a case where that actually happened (and it's never happened to me). People also say, "oh, but they'll ruin your credit rating."

You couple the card cancellation with a message to them demanding they cancel your account. Just imagine a credit card collection company agreeing to come after you, when you made a good faith attempt to close the account.

> Just imagine a credit card collection company agreeing to come after you, when you made a good faith attempt to close the account.

Given the practices detailed here, I could very easily imagine it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37490241

As you said, you "imagine" it.

Unless they can levy your income or put a lien on your assets, they can "come after you legally" all they want, but can't force you to pay. I think this is the general problem with small claims court as well -- you may win your case, still doesn't magically collect your money.

can they hit back with changing the credit score? (that's not just a Chinese concept) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score

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