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Comment by defparam | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly why I place SiriusXM on a virtual credit card and a throw away email. I sign up for $6 per month SiriusXM promo with a $7 per month ceiling on the virtual card. When the 7th or 8th month comes around and the offer expires they have the audacity to charge $22+ for this content. The overcharge is caught and they don't get my money, and I'm happy to receive the disconnect signal.

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This isn't as much of a hack as people think. Plenty of companies will continue to provide you with service for many months even if the card declines and then send the unpaid debt to collections, resulting in infinitely more headaches for you.

I'm curious why do business at all with a company who has such practices and requires such special workarounds?

Not the person you're replying to, but when you get in this mindset the workarounds are pretty easy.

I don't trust any business to act responsibly with any information I give them, so I also use a lot of virtual cards and spoofed email addresses (actually I just use a catchall on my domain most of the time which is less secure I guess, but does most of what I need).

It's because generally I do like their product at a $6/mo price point. It's leagues better than FM radio. I just don't like their billing/promo practices and so these are the tricks to protect yourself as a consumer.

I see. Might you or others recommend some virtual credit card products?

Privacy.com is what I've used the past half decade

Capital one credit cards kn website, or with google chrome auto generated cards if you add C1 card to it.

Thanks. What's the kn website?

Sorry, typo, i mean on the website, capitalone.com

As another person said, this has become standard practice for me. It's less about doing business with shady companies and more about insulating myself from shady practices. I've had a few cases where I've been on a plan that suddenly changes with only a few day's notice, or I get "graduated" to another tier because the previous one is going away. In all cases, I was charged more money than I initially agreed, and the virtual credit cards saved me.

Sorry to glom on to you, but how do you set that up?

Capital One offers a product Eno for virtual cards. Or you could try prepaid gift cards to cap total value.

privacy.com has cards like that.

You can go to privacy.com and create an account. You then link your real credit cards or bank accounts for payment source.

Privacy.com also has a browser extension and a mobile app. So it's easy to create/manage virtual credit cards per service. You can also create single use virtual credit cards that automatically close after a single transaction with a limit that you can set.

Unfortunately privacy.com requires the use Plaid, which demands your banks auth details and grants Plaid the ability to scrape your bank accounts (they pinky promise they do not for the account verification product). I thought it undermines the whole "Privacy" aspect.

From what I recall when I registered some time back, it was possible to simply use any debit card for the process. This meant there was no need to share login details with anyone.

Their documentation may provide more current details than I can though.

https://support.privacy.com/hc/en-us/articles/7970157169943-...

What's a good alternative for virtual CC's?

They don't exactly require Plaid, they can also use a debit card or ACH. You have to email support for the privilege though.

I had tried Plaid at first, but quickly switched when I found out that they would watch your bank balance and disable your Privacy account if it went below $50. They would require you to prove a balance of at least $50 in order to enable the account again. Fortunately, both of the other methods don't really care, and as long as you disconnect Plaid while your balance happens to be over $50, your account will stay enabled.

Better than privacy, many credcards themselves now offer virtual card(s), and can cancel them. Capital One is my go to for these. Google Chrome offers capital one virtual cards on the fly if you added the actual capital one card to google pay.

Using privacy.com requires me to give them access to my bank, and I lose points, cashback, any charge back protection.

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