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I had a similar experience quite some time ago. Somehow small AWS charges were appearing on my credit card--on the order of around a dollar. I called Amazon and
by nathanaldensr 7y ago
I had a similar experience quite some time ago. Somehow small AWS charges were appearing on my credit card--on the order of around a dollar. I called Amazon and asked them where the charges were coming from and they wouldn't tell me. I had no personal AWS account nor had I ever used the card with AWS. They refused to provide me any level of assistance. It was very frustrating. This meant every month my wife had to request a chargeback through the credit card company.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoDid you cancel the card and replace it to prevent further charges?
- reaperducer 7y agoThis doesn't always work. I had a similar problem with Chase, and the charges kept appearing on the new card. Chase explained to me that the charges can follow the person, not the specific card number.
- CodeMage 7y ago> Chase explained to me that the charges can follow the person, not the specific card number. Can anyone explain this? It goes against all I thought I knew about online payments and credit cards.
- rbritton 7y agoIt's a common feature of payment processors to reduce the number of transaction failures due to expired but not updated payment records. Here's Braintree's page on it: https://www.braintreepayments.com/features/account-updater https://www.braintreepayments.com/features/account-updater
- mbreese 7y agoThis can happen sometimes if you get a new credit card number (but the same account). If you have a reoccurring purchase, like a subscription, the billing was already authorized, so the new charge is automatically applied to the new card number. If you get a completely new account, that can't happen. I'm not sure what happens if you get a new card from the same company (like getting a brand new Chase account). I'd guess it would depend on their backend as to if new charges followed you.
- snarf21 7y agoIt works like this. Chase is trying to be helpful so let's say you set up your utility bill to go through their credit card. Now, you get a new card with Chase because you lost it. Chase can see that the old number and new number are both attached to your account history and the charge from the utility company has the same utility account number so they happily approve it for you so you don't have to change your utility billing. It isn't such an awful feature except in this case where you want it stopped. This is one argument for not using credit cards for recurring online bills and ACH instead. Most people love the rewards though. We need better online payments options that prevent these scams. It would be nice to have the ability to whitelist and blacklist online vendors.
- imtringued 7y ago> It would be nice to have the ability to whitelist and blacklist online vendors. Isn't that basically a direct debit mandate?
- cj 7y agoI believe Visa/MasterCard/etc will send processors like Stripe certain types of updates to card information. See this section in the Stripe docs: https://stripe.com/docs/saving-cards#automatic-card-updates https://stripe.com/docs/saving-cards#automatic-card-updates
- lovehashbrowns 7y agoOther people have told you how this "account update" process works so I'll skip that. I just went through this with Citi/Mastercard. I'm not sure if other companies do this, but I was able to opt out of this "account update" feature to hopefully stop a Comcast charge from going through to my new card number. I'll find out on Dec 10 if it works, but the customer rep I spoke to says it should. It basically cancels that feature so that I now have to manually go through every merchant and update them to my new credit card.
- zentiggr 7y agoThen I'd take that to small claims court, and make them prove a legitimate debt or default if they don't show.
- ticmasta 7y agoI can understand this is your deep, gut reaction - "sue them!", but have you ever been to small claims court? Are you aware that most ToS define the resolution mechanism which includes the jurisdiction?
- RandomBacon 7y agoIsn't up to the company to send a representative and point out the ToS to the judge? Just because the ToS says that doesn't mean the end user can't file.
- rtkwe 7y agoCompany can most likely just reply via motion to dismiss and not ever send anyone.
- Finnucane 7y agoIf a bank told me that, I'd cancel that card and go to another bank.
- rtkwe 7y agoIt's a feature they provide to be helpful to their customers. Absent any info from you about needing to stop it why would they not do it, it's there to make losing a card much less painful than it used to be.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jimktrains2 7y agoIt's not so much the person as the account. Some merchants/processors get updated card information. https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau
- carey 7y agoThat's an awful lot of work just because Amazon can't charge the right account. It also doesn't necessarily solve the problem. The charges could accumulate in their systems until Amazon hands them to a debt collector, or the bank might helpfully transfer them to the new card anyway.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- StuffedParrot 7y agoThis would have the benefit of putting the onus on Amazon to justify the charges.
- gowld 7y agoSimply reporting the fraud via chargeback is easier and puts the onus on Amazon.
- StuffedParrot 7y agoEvidently it didn’t work.
- Gibbon1 7y agoGoing to be fun when Amazon retaliates by locking you out of your AWS accounts.
- nathanaldensr 7y agoI didn't, but it was eventually reported as compromised anyway, so the credit card company issued me a new number.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoIn what way is this not theft?
- behringer 7y agoIt is theft, but it's not amazon stealing it, it's somebody else. Amazon knows there is somebody scamming them, but, here's the kicker, they don't know if it's the caller complaining or the person placing the order. The best thing to do is exactly what they said, file a chargeback and eventually Amazon can take action. You'll notice the person running the website never cooperated with answering Amazon's questions, it's no wonder they didn't work with her. If you don't want to work with the merchant, then contact the credit card company. Not hard to figure out.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoAt a minimum Amazon should have to help clearing up the issue. I guess some entities are above the rules most of us have to live by. Same with hospitals that can repeatedly charge bogus items without any consequences.
- behringer 7y agoJust because they won't tell your they're looking into it (because they don't know you or you're not authorized to discuss someone else's account) doesn't mean they're not taking action behind the scenes.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoThat’s not acceptable. They take money from a credit card and make no effort to explain why? That’s not ok.
- behringer 7y agoIt's not their job to secure your card outside of their own system. Assuming these cards aren't stolen from within Amazon's own servers, it's up to you and your credit card to protect it from unauthorized use.
- zentiggr 7y agoSwitch to a new charge account, close this one. If they ever pursue the debt, make 'em prove it and only pay if they have proof.
- scurvy 7y agoThis has happened to me on a corporate level as well. We had many teams that opened their own AWS accounts with a shared credit card. They wouldn't tell us what accounts were using the card, even though we simply wanted to migrate things to separate cards. Useless, unhelpful, and borderline braindead. And yes, we have paid enterprise support.
- devicetray0 7y ago> many teams > a shared credit card Sharing CCs across teams is a business antipattern. You should use expense reporting, or switch to invoicing. Regardless, when I was a consultant we had success with the email admins tracking the signup and/or billing emails, which arrived at the account numbers.
- scurvy 7y agoUh yeah, thanks for pointing out what we were already trying to fix.