Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

This makes sense somewhat - if you could get out of a contract with a merchant, simply by canceling your credit card, then why bother to uphold your obligations (multiple payments, length of relationship) etc... Just get whatever benefits you want, then cancel the card and wave goodbye to the merchant. That would be _particularly_ problematic on a multiple-payment scenario.

The net-net is _never_ give your credit card to anyone who suggests they will charge you, unless you have full control over that relationship.

It's the key reason why I subscribe to all my magazines and newspapers (key exception being the WSJ) through iTunes - single place to control subscriptions - with the added bonus that I get reminded every month that there will be a renewal coming up.

I also negotiated with my Gym to allow me to pay the full year up front + initiation fee to avoid having to give them my credit card - It was amazing how difficult it was for me to convince them to allow me to give them $410 up front for a $30/month gym membership. They really make a lot of money off of people who don't want to come into the gym and cancel, or forget to do so on their "Annual" anniversary when they get signed up for another year.

Most of us are in our early 20s when we discover the downsides of recurring credit card charges - I'm surprised that someone as savvy as Arrington is discovering that he can't just cancel his account to end those recurring charges - I thought it was something that students usually do and discover doesn't work. I certainly did when I was a student.

No, if you have purchases on your agreement prior to cancellation, it's obvious that you are beholden to these purchases. These are within contractual guidelines and sensible.

If a merchant tries to charge my card, and finds that they cannot, they can end their relationship with me, and if, for some reason, cannot reconcile outstanding costs through traditional means, can utilize collections agencies or any other means they wish to obtain their due.

This is not only nonsensical, but legally questionable at best, and I'm very surprised this is the first I've seen anyone bring a point against it.

My gym offers a membership - $30/month with credit card and a one year term, no initiation fee, or $50/month, $75 initiation fee on a month-by-month basis. When I sign up for the one year membership, I put my signature on a contract, indicating that I will oblige by all the conditions.

Should I be allowed to sign up for the one year term, and then cancel my credit card after a couple months?

Whenever you enter a contract, there are conditions that must be fulfilled to cancel that contract. Simply saying "I didn't read those conditions" or "I don't want the product anymore" is not a sufficient condition to terminate the contract. And thinking that you can get out of it by "canceling the credit card" is naive in my opinion.

yes, you should.

Your contract is between yourself and your gym, the bank should have no part in either enforcing or stopping its fulfilment unless it is asked to by the courts.

Should I be allowed to sign up for the one year term, and then cancel my credit card after a couple months?

Yes, you should. Because it's not the credit card companies responsibility to worry about what outstanding contracts you may or may not still have ongoing.

It would be up to the merchant to pursue legal action if your attempt to defraud the contract was substantial enough for them to care. If this was an ongoing problem for them, they would have to debate if their "deal" is really valued by their consumers and worth continuing to offer.

But, it's not Visa's problem to worry about these things.

Absolutely.

When a civil contract is broken the appropriate response is a trial in a court of law. Businesses are quite familiar with the debt collection process. A judge and possibly a jury are needed to resolve these types of disputes fairly.

Under no circumstances should a merchant be permitted to forcefully take funds from another person, outside the purview of the law.

There is a general perception that initiating a chargeback is a way of getting out of a credit card related charge for any reason, when in reality it's an opportunity for the merchant to prove to the bank that they provided a product/service to you.

I know someone that used to fight chargebacks as part of their job. If you'd been using that service to send pics of your junk to people and then became despondent when it turned out that women don't find unsolicited crotch photos an appropriate pick-up line, you can be sure those pics would get faxed over to your bank as part of the package to show you'd been using the site.

>The net-net is _never_ give your credit card to anyone who suggests they will charge you, unless you have full control over that relationship.

huh. most people don't feel this way. I have setup my company to require action from the customer if they want to pay me; all the feedback I've gotten from this has been negative. People care more about the convenience of recurring payments than they care about security.

I use paypal, which doesn't really support pull billing; I send the customer a bill, and they pay it or they don't. Upon request, I setup paypal recurring payments, which seems to be fairly popular.

I do this in part 'cause I feel that pull billing (e.g. "charge 'em and hope they forgot to cancel") is a little scummy, but mostly because my billing system is a mess, and this way, the worst thing that could happen is that I end up asking people for more money than I should; no money is automatically moved, protecting me from that particular embarrassment.

Paypal recurring payments are much easier to cancel than credit card recurring payments.

yes. In fact, when they were first rolled out, it was difficult for me to cancel them for the customer. (this has been fixed; the recurring payments functionality is pretty good now. But it was crap when it came out.) but I have far more customers asking for some kind of recurring payments that /refuse/ the paypal recurring payments than customers that take the paypal recurring payments. Hell, I have more customers that have their bank send me a paper check every month than I have on paypal recurring payments.

The feedback I get is that if I offered recurring credit card payments, most of my customers would be using them; rather than the, say, one percent that uses paypal recurring payments and five percent that uses their bank to send me a check automatically.

That doesn't "get you out" of the contract any more than paying with a bad check would. You still owe them what you owe them, regardless of how current your credit card details are.

If a recurring charge comes with a contractual obligation, then it should be up to the merchant to collect when billing information ceases to be valid.

That's why I use a one time use credit card number with these things. If I want to stop the charges I just click "close number" and they are blocked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Payment_Number

Reply on news.ycombinator.com