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I had subscribed to NY Times during an introductory offer with a Virtual Shopsafe credit card. I didn't increase the limit on my credit card and after the first month, my subscription became delinquent.

Despite this NY Times continued to deliver the newspaper for a couple of months before finally cancelling the subscription and sending me an overdue notice. The notice threatened passing of the charges to collections.

I saw a similar article here and decided that it wasn't worth getting my credit score dented over a small amount and promptly called them over the phone, created another Shopsafe card and paid the overdues, I also confirmed with the customer service to make sure that the subscription stayed cancelled and the matter not being forwarded to collections.

Given all this I'm still curious to know if I could have gotten away without my score being hit as I was using a virtual card. Is that the case?

If not, would the situation have been better if I'd have gotten a prepaid visa card to start the membership?

nikhil
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3 Answers3

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NYT has no authority to report on the credit card account. The introductory offer you accepted likely had a specified duration, like a 1 year commitment from you. It doesn't matter that you used a virtual card, or a credit card, or check or any other form of payment. NYT can, if it wants, send your NYT account to collections and/or report your delinquency to a reporting agency. But this reporting would be your NYT account, not the credit card.

quid
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Using a virtual credit card doesn't stop them from reporting it. Virtual credit cards are about avoiding fraud, not about avoiding responsibility for money you owe.

Loren Pechtel
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These are unrelated.

If I subscribe to the paper and pay a month by check, they will just keep billing and delivering the paper.

The virtual card would work for a service that will cancel when the billing attempt fails. i.e. A service that won't just keep active without being paid in advance.

JoeTaxpayer
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