In my answer to a recent question, I pointed out that some auto renewal programs are scams.
it is a scam, they never intend to let you cancel your free subscription easily.
The company just has no reason to stop taking your money. So they keep charging your card.
Is it possible to have your credit card company stop allowing charges from the company, or is canceling the credit card your only option?
This applies to credit cards. If you're using debit cards, you're on your own.
First, make a modest effort to work directly with the vendor. The onus is on the vendor to be reasonably accessible: have an online site that actually provides a way to cancel that works; provide a customer service number that works, etc. Spend 10 minutes on this earnestly, and you have fulfilled this duty.
Then, contact your credit card company and report fraud and request a chargeback. Tell them about the reasonable efforts you made to contact the company, and that it's an auto renewal you don't want. You will get your chargeback. Others who are saying otherwise are just wrong.
Mind you, there's some variation here, depending on what the goods are.
For any online service that is prepaid by the month or other period, like Major League Baseball live streaming (annually), Netflix (monthly) etc., it is impossible for the merchant to dispute the chargeback. The Bank's logic is very simple: the merchant is able to instantly disconnect your service. And the bank says "Look. If the customer doesn't want your service, stop selling it to them and walk away. If you want to snare the customer in lawyerly contract tricks, we won't help because that's bad business, we don't like to see that from businesses with a welcoming Mastercard sign on their door."
Virtual goods generally have so much merchant-side scamming that banks have little patience with it. If you buy Warcraft gold, and charge it back, Blizzard is expected to give you back your cash and use their god-power in-game to clawback the gold. A third party goldseller is just outta luck.
Now suppose it was a monthly stamp subscription. Every month they auto-sell you a roll of 100 stamps for $49. Stamps are fungible, easily converted to cash. And the good is physical and they have already shipped it. In this case, the merchant is likely to succeed in a chargeback. But not on the second chargeback a month later; the merchant should have known from the first chargeback that the customer doesn't want the good.
Casino chips are a more extreme example of "fungible to cash". A lesser example is event tickets; there's a tangible physical ticket and a vast underground economy for people to trade those tickets. Charging back tickets you have already printed out may meet resistance, especially if the event is over and the merchant can show the tickets were used. But again, banks expect merchants to "take a hint" and stop autocharging when the customer complains.
A chargeback only cancels the payment method, not the debt. So the merchant is at liberty to march down to the courthouse and use that reason (or any reason, as trumped up as they please) to sue you and try to collect that.
But the legal system isn't any more tolerant of bullpuckey than the banks. Much less in fact. The merchant is very likely to be handed their hat. And sanctions too, so at the least they should expect to pay defendant's legal fees, and at worst be barred from suing again without court oversight! The latter would apply if they tried to do this on a larger scale, e.g. Suing hundreds of cancellers. Righthaven, Prenda, etc.
Since a lawsuit is a lost cause, they'd be far more likely to just bill you a lot and threaten to take it to collection agencies. In fact, WIRED Magazine did that.
Of course, if the charges are part of a genuine, enforceable agreement or debt, this principle means you are still on the hook. I can't think of many examples of things typically paid for by credit card like this. But, say, if your landlord gives you the option to pay your rent by credit card, chargeback doesn't extinguish the need to pay rent, it just means you can't use a credit card anymore. Another example is a doctor's bill. Or your electric bill that you autpay via CC. Another, bless the few of you likely to commit to one of these, is an enforceable pledge to a charity.
But all these are plain debts that just happen to have an option by which they can be paid by credit card. Obviously you owe them.
What they won't be doing is re-charging your credit card for the amount you already disputed with additional fees. You'll simply dispute that, and the bank will read them the Riot Act, and this very negative attention in the fraud department will endanger their ability to remain a Visa/MC merchant.
Because yes. Merchants with excessive numbers of chargebacks face consequences, including withholding of substantial fractions of their money, higher transactional rates, and cancellation of their merchant services altogether.
A new merchant who is getting a lot of chargebacks could see ALL of his money frozen and held back to cover all the chargebacks the bank expects to have to give, which could be 100% if the product is fraudulent.
You can, but it won't help.
You can easily cancel any charges on your credit card, but this only puts the obligation to prove that you really owe the payment onto the charging business.
If the charge was incorrect or fraud, that typically ends the discussion, because they cannot prove that you owe it.
However, if you really do owe the amount, this is going to come back and bite you badly - you will be charged again, get fees added, and potentially have to pay for the processing cost of the credit card company and the business.
Also, of course you can't just walk away from contractual obligations by closing your credit card. That just postpones the moment when they collect their money.
Never use this to try to skip legitimate charges, it's not going to work, and will hurt you only harder.
Unfortunately, when you sign up for a monthly plan, their charges are legitimate; and in the fine print they typically describe the tiring process of canceling, so you agreed to it too.
I've used credit cards for decades (never paid a penny in finance charges :-). While it's a finite sample, during that time I've had 10-12 charges that I have disputed - incorrect billing, phony billing, failure to stop billing me, etc.
If after chasing the claimant I got no resolution, I called the CC company to dispute the charges. Since my claims were legitimate, in every instance the issue was resolved in my favor by the CC company. I've never had to cancel a card. AFAIC, that isn't a solution since by doing so, you would then be considered delinquent.
