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Comment by abalone | Hacker News Reader

Every single person who has been misled into signing up for a recurring charge should do this one thing:

Dispute the charge with their credit card company.

You'll get your money back and it will issue a bunch of chargebacks to JustFab, which will penalize them financially. If enough people complain their penalties will escalate and their credit card processing rates will go through the roof. This is how the credit card system weeds out crappy businesses like this.

Unfortunately the very people who this model is designed to exploit are the least likely to know about their consumer protections.

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You can also file an action against them in your local small claims court. Depending on where you live, it takes about 30 minutes to fill out the form and costs around $25 in filing fees. Most likely the company will not respond to your complaint, and you will receive a judgment for all of the money you paid them. Assuming they don't go bankrupt, they will eventually pay you and satisfy the judgment. I did this against similar scams like Video Professor in the early Facebook era and it worked surprisingly well for 2 years worth of scam rebills to which I had been completely oblivious.

>> Assuming they don't go bankrupt, they will eventually pay you and satisfy the judgment.

Let's be honest, though. It's 80% certain that they're going to go bankrupt. They're clearly not building a company to last. Your best hope would be to get your money back before bankrupcy proceedings start.

Why? A chargeback is basically an automation of that process, with the full backing of your credit card company.

If corporations are going to run the system, you might as well get some benefit from having a large one go to bat for you when you can.

Totally not the case that you get your money back, at least with WellsFargo Visa, they will investigate to determine whether your card was used by some other party.

Saying, "I didn't read the terms of the agreement" is not grounds for a chargeback.

What's worse is when you've signed up for a One year recurring payment and you have to jump through hoops to cancel such as a registered letter to cancel.

Wells fargo will refuse to cancel for you, saying it is between you and the vendor. Further to that, you can't even cancel your credit card, as Wells Fargo will transfer the recurring charge to a new card.

About the only way I could figure out how to get out of that type of recurring scam is to just cancel my bank account.

And that's why you shouldn't bank at Wells Fargo.

WF is fine, its just that parent thought his WF Visa was the same thing as an actual Visa that comes with actual protection

Remember, never use debit cards.

A locally based credit union will provide better and more flexible support than any big chain bank. Plus you get to use any credit union ATM anywhere (there's a CO-OP network ATM in every 7-11) for free, and most refund some amount of ATM fees every month.

But a Credit Union debit card has just the same weaknesses as a Wells Fargo one.

That's why you should use a credit card and not a debit card for online purchases. If you dispute the charge, it's their money instead of yours that they're recovering.

Precisely. But I'm thinking that the OP's GF, being a foreigner, probably did not have an American CC (no credit history etcetc), so for people like her, there is just no choice....

Chase is also being a hard ass about charge backs these days...

That's not been my experience with AmEx. Some scammy company began billing me for monthly charges, and I couldn't get anywhere through the telephone number listed on the bill. I called AmEx, disputed the charges, and got all the money back—but the company kept charging me every month anyway! AmEx said they'd put a block on the company, and since then I've been fine.

AmEx has a unique "no questions asked" chargeback policy. That's why people use AmEx cards despite that their interchange fees are higher, they aren't accepted everywhere, and they're harder to qualify for.

I can't speak for Wells Fargo, but I've had zero problems issuing charge backs with Chase Signature. I generally file a claim on their ridiculously unpleasant web form and I get temporarily reimbursed immediately while they investigate the issue.

Yes - that's the way it works with Wellsfargo. You are not required to pay the charge until they've completed their investigation. But, as long as the vendor has evidence that you submitted the card number, and that the vendor documented the recurring charge, and you agreed to the charge - you are responsible for the charges on your card.

How can WellsFargo transfer a recurring charge to a new credit card? That makes no sense. How can they associate old card with new card? That means if there was fraud going on WellsFargo would have no way of stopping it ever.

It also sounds like you are talking about a debit card, and not a credit card, and it sounds like you gave a scammer your bank account number, not debit card number. Those are just guesses.

There's a service available called Account Updater that provides merchants with updated credit card numbers. It's intended to be a convenience for both merchants and consumers.

http://usa.visa.com/merchants/products-services/processing-s...

I can confirm that Bank of America is great about this on the debit side (though I have started using a credit card for online purchases). BoA gave me my money back instantly, stopped charges from the vendor and went off to investigate.

Except for there is a time window for these sorts of things.

His girlfriend isn't going to be able to dispute charges that are 8-months old.

Then also file a complaint with the attorney general of a state in the US and the Better Business Bureau. Also write an honest Yelp review (make it fair and truthful but not slanted as you don't want to be sued over libel). All of those things matter a lot to businesses, in addition to their standing with credit card companies and banks.

Those won't matter to scam business, especially since the BBB itself is a scam, and most yelp reviews are fake.

Although I think the BBB is not a scam, there are still many other routes to take. There's always a potential for a class-action law suit. Some law firms specialize in that and work cases only taking money from any final winnings in court.

And the attorneys general are usually happy to hear any complaints. While there's often not immediate results or consequences, having made an official complaint helps those who are seeking to apply some rule of law via the justice system.

The BBB sells its A ratings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo8kfV9kONw

Watch the video.

The BBB is the very definition of the word scam. More specifically, extortion.

The BBB are close to a scam themselves, but it might be worth contacting the FTC - they tend to show an interest in this kind of thing and can lay down some serious financial hurt themselves.

The window is usually 180 days, and some of the more lenient credit card companies will go back even further depending on the circumstances. She can easily get back 6 of the 8 monthly charges.

A simple way to avoid issues like this is to always generate a virtual card for each purchase, and then turn the virtual card off the moment the transaction is completed. You can do this through Netspend prepaid cards - you just open their site in another tab, generate a card with two clicks and turn it off with another two clicks. It costs nothing and the whole process adds about 1 minute to your purchase. I do this for every "free" trial I take on - if I like the service, then I will consciously make the decision to change the billing to a real card. No one gets to make that decision for me.

That's a lot of work to buy a pair of shoes. Not to mention, I never heard of Netspend (until now). And I spend most of my day on the net. You expect folks who don't to know?

It shouldn't be this way. Buyer beware is one thing. But one shouldn't have to watch their back to buy a pair of shoes.

What this company is doing is low down.

By the way, thanks for the tip. I'm looking at Netspend right now.

Virtual card number? Never heard of this before. Sounds useful. Is this something unique to Netspend? Can you do it via Paypal or something if you're outside the US? I wouldnt need a physical card if I can link such functionality to my (verified) Paypal account.

PayPal does it too. The screens to create the cards are just hard to get to.

I think PayPal used to do it through a browser toolbar they had, but disbanded the service for some reason. I'm not sure if they've replaced that functionality in some other product. With Netspend, you get one of their physical cards, but you also get a login for their site where you can create as many virtual cards as you want. The virtual cards use the balance from the main card, and you can shut off each virtual card whenever you feel like it.

Many (not all) credit card vendors offer virtual account numbers.

My bank provides a virtual card service, and I use it for basically everything. I would be hesitant to make purchasing from smaller or new online stores without it.

Bank Of America has SafeShop for their cards.

https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf...

Discover card has something similar also:

https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/member-benefits/securi...

It may be possible.. I've gotten refunds going back that far. But definitely the more recent months will get refunded. And that's enough to put some financial hurt on JustFab, as there are additional penalties they pay with each chargeback.

Well, in my country the credit card company's police on time window isn't very relevant. If there is a scam involved, it becomes a legal matter and for that the time window is years.

For most cases, 8 months are out of scope, but his girlfriend should be able to successfully dispute the last 3-6 month bills anyway.

In some places, like EU direct debit legislation, the maximum time window for such disputes is 12 months after you receive that invoice/bill, so ~13 months in effect.

That is the time window for chargebacks, but not for small claims court.

Dispute the charge with their credit card company.

Who is their credit card company?

I have not had a credit card complaint for years but I would probably ask my credit card issuer for a refund, in particular because I have an agreement with my credit card issuer but not with the vendor's credit card company.

Yes, that's what the parent says.

When Bob has a problem with Ann's scummy business Bob should ask Bob's credit card company for a refund, which generates chargebacks for Ann's business.

For me, not having to deal with a vendor (or even its credit card company) is a major advantage of using a credit card instead – for example – paying by invoice.

I have just checked my credit card issuer's process for such cases, it seems pretty straight forward.

The down vote of my comment indicates a possible difference in other parts of the world …

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