18 ms·

I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their mercha

I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their merchant line which is invalid. When I filed request to void the charge to American Express, initially they declined! Then I filed appeal with angry comments and they finally voided it. It took over two months for the process. I just saw new Rhapsody charge again. The credit card companies literally have no control over who can charge us. If anyone at stripe is reading this, I think this is golden opportunity for consumer focused payment service. One should be at least able to block a merchant from charging my card. I can do that for spammer email but can't do that for spam charge on my card - in 2020!

amelius 6y ago
There's an asymmetry whenever you sign up for something. It's always them who determine the terms. I think there should be more consumer protection.
balladeer 6y ago
This was a revelation sometimes back and it was Amex (relatively new in India) but I am sure it would be same for any credit card issuer. I had a VPS in Europe that I had emailed the support to cancel about a year ago and they had replied telling me I could do it myself (listed the steps) or they'd need another confirmation from me to go ahead and cancel. I forgot about it. Got charged some 40 Euro a year later. I was shocked. My first thought was a compromised card. But immediately afterwards I received invoice from VPS provider. I called the bank and asked them how did that happen. They said it's possible. Lucky for me the provider immediately reversed the charge. The thing is I had cancelled that Amex card almost a year before that charge had happened. It was still charged! I was baffled. Coming from a country where literally every credit card payment has to be authorised via an OTP or password (since as long as I can remember) it was a whole new world for me. Well, that cancelled card was charged again (almost a year after I had the last experience) when I shopped at AliExpress and forgot to switch to a new card while making the payment. This time I just paid the bill and went around Internet removing that cancelled card.
- sumedh 6y ago
  If the card was cancelled, where did you see the charge, did you see it on your new Amex card statement? India did not have the OTP option, RBI made it mandatory to prevent fraud.
  - balladeer 6y ago
    Got an email. About the RBI bit - possibly, but I don't think I remember one without OTP or a password (it was verified by Visa I guess or something).
- davchana 6y ago
  I think international transactions have some way to skip the OTP thing.
Jd 6y ago
I started using privacy.com for this reason. You can spin up a separate card number for each transaction type with its own limit (e.g. $100/month or $200). You can also just turn them off at will.
- input_sh 6y ago
  Note: US-only at the moment, Privacy.com isn't available anywhere else.
  - v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
    There are other services, though not as advanced. In Europe you could use Revolut to create virtual disposable cards. They are more useful for one-time payments however. privacy.com seems like such a sleek solution.
- ithkuil 6y ago
  Looks great. Not available in my country :-(
- sytelus 6y ago
  privacy.com looks great. I think the only disadvantage is that you lose all the 2-5% cashback, travel benefits and so on. I wish they could produce card while keeping these benefits but still its good card to have for shady websites.
  - jacoblambda 6y ago
    Depending on who your card is through, some companies started offering this. It's often just hidden in the web UI.
    - robohoe 6y ago
      Yep, Bank of America and Citi offer the same service. Not sure about others.
mywacaday 6y ago
Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.
- thih9 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. This sounds absurd and discourages me from supporting them. On the other hand I cancelled and re-enabled netflix a number of times. I’m currently subscribed and happy that I can change it anytime.
- adamtulinius 6y ago
  Actually we have such a law in the EU. Not sure what it's called, but I'm sure it exists. I believe the wording to be something like it has to be possible to cancel in a similar way you signed up.
  - elcomet 6y ago
    If it exists, it is not followed. In France, Le Monde (most famous daily newspaper) requires you to send a paper mail (and not a regular mail, but a registered mail, which costs around 5-10€) to cancel your subscription. Even if you subscribed on the website, for a 100% online subscription. It's really shady.
    - erk__ 6y ago
      It may not be followed in every country, but at least in Denmark the "forbrugerombudsmanden" slams down on things like that, I think that they recently sent out a message that online services should be able to be unsubscribed online as well.
      - martin_bech 6y ago
        Also that you should sent out an option to cancel, before each withdraw for the membership.
lovehashbrowns 6y ago
It's so frustrating because my credit card declines the most random things. But when a service charges me twice in one week after I've been subscribed and charged the same amount once a month for years, the charge goes through and I have to go through hoops to get that money back. And credit cards do this other obnoxious thing where they update merchants when you get a new credit card. It would be great if they didn't do that because then you'd remember that you are paying for certain services you never use because you'd get a payment declined email. But nah credit card companies just let those scumbag merchants continue their shadow charges under the guise of it being more convenient. Certain services like energy bills, phone bills. Sure, update the merchant with the new credit card. But a gym!? Gtfo with that trash.
- sfj 6y ago
  Why don't you just read your fucking statement?
- marcoperaza 6y ago
  I'd rather they update all of my merchants instead of assume that I want to cancel this or that. Citi has a nice feature that shows you all of your recurring charges. Maybe try to use a feature like that? I also have it set up to send a text message to my phone any time my card is used.
  - lovehashbrowns 6y ago
    Didn't know about that citi feature! I'll look for it, ty. I do have alerts for charges >$x amount but it rarely gets triggered.
    - marcoperaza 6y ago
      I set x=0 to get all of the alerts. I also found that the text notifications are more reliable than the app-based notifications.
Geezus_42 6y ago
https://privacy.com/join/5FPVD https://privacy.com/join/5FPVD Give every merchant an individual card and kill the card when they won't stop charging you. P. S. There's also a browser extension that will let you generate a card at the time of checkout and autofill the information.
- Operyl 6y ago
  While I love Privacy, the reality is a lot of merchants block these kind of virtual cards. Also, really, a throwaway account to post a referral link?
  - qmarchi 6y ago
    Personal anecdote: I've only had one that didn't accept a privacy card, my rent. Other than that, it's been golden.
    - Operyl 6y ago
      I’ve had a good number block me from using them, typically in industries where fraud and chargebacks run rampant. I.e. gaming services.
tialaramex 6y ago
> The credit card companies literally have no control over who can charge us. That's not quite true. The card network can refuse a merchant for any reason, constantly making bogus charges would probably be a good reason for the network to refuse them and that's likely to be the result. Of course you don't see if your bogus charge was reflective of 0.01% of the charges from this merchant or 99.9% However as I've explained on HN a few times there's an important distinction between two separate payment card processes: Authorization and Settlement. Authorization is the one with PINs and online referral and even getting a call from your bank about "possible fraud". Authorization protects the bank from fraud by customers (you're a necessary evil to them) and merchants by automatically collecting evidence that both authorized this to happen. Once upon a time that meant taking an "impression" and a few merchants still do that, today it may mean redirecting customers to a half-arsed HTTPS site or an EMV PIN terminal. Settlement moves money. The merchant tells the network that they want $85.26 from card #1234567890 and usually that will just result in them receiving $85.26 These two systems aren't tied together. If there are two authorizations against your card this week for $20.00 and $35.26 but also three settlements for $19.86, $209.42 and $20.00 respectively, it's likely no alarm bells go off, this is fine, you pay $249.28 One reason it is this way is that while Settlement is essential to the idea in the first place (if the merchants don't get money what's the point?), Authorization is dozens of extra things tacked on over time and so each has to be optional or the system would fail. This means important safeguards in Authorization don't actually safeguard you, only your issuer (in your case Amex) For example: Modern Authorization schemes are replay resistant. When you pay with an EMV card the merchant gets a one-time "cryptogram" that isn't reusable. Buying a $5 product, walking out of the store, then realising you needed two, so you go back and buy another $5 product results in two entirely different cryptograms for the two Authorizations. The store can't present a third Authorization because it would need a new cryptogram. BUT Settlement isn't replay resistant. When (not if, this really happens) an IT mistake results in running all the Settlement for a merchant twice, customers just all get charged twice, again no flags are raised automatically, it will take until either somebody confesses their error or more likely angry customers start calling their issuers to complain. For individuals the only advice is: Check your statements, demand that line items you can't explain be reversed, and try to pick an issuer who is on your side.
- 6y ago
simonlbn 6y ago
This is why I use Paypal for recurring services when possible. One list of all the items, and you can cancel the payment there easily. Dodgy companies like the New York Times even do offline transactions to successfully charge canceled cards. I was able to cancel it by changing payment to Paypal.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  It's funny that you mention NYT and Paypal. I signed up to support, but upon finding out that they still show ads to subscribed users, I wanted to cancel. Turns out you have to call them simply to cancel your subscription, which is the worst dark pattern of all. I just swapped my subscription to Paypal, then blocked it in paypal. They then spent the next month sending me 8 emails asking me to fix my payment, which I all sent to the spam folder. I'm not a big fan of paypal, but definitely having control over your recurring payments is the best feature.
chrischen 6y ago
Actually stripe supports a visa and mastercard service that automatically updates the card number if it gets changed.
g_p 6y ago
I understand why card companies struggle to implement this while retaining good relations with merchants, but this does seem an opportunity for Stripe or similar. You can "log into" a London TFL "account" that is effectively just your credit/debit card. That means that, at least in theory, Stripe could let you log in to a "shadow" account as a card holder. I think the problem is that Stripe (and others) don't want to upset merchants by making it possible for people to cancel "fixed term" subscriptions, where the merchant claims the customer has entered a contract to pay for X months. Agreed entirely though - I would really like to see privacy.com style "limited authentication value/merchant card numbers" take off more and become a "default". This has added privacy benefits too, as it means for anyone other than the CC issuer, it will become very difficult to link digital transactions.
dwighttk 6y ago
your credit card 8 years ago had an expiration date beyond 2020?
- nadavami 6y ago
  The major credit card companies have a service where they can notify the merchant of the new details when the card expires. I believe Visa calls it Account Updater. https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/account-updater https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/account-update...
  - dwighttk 6y ago
    can I get the opposite of that?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
digitalengineer 6y ago
“ Apple Card has awesome features but the most important of them all, at leasts from a security standpoint, is probably the ability to generate virtual card numbers on demand, which will come in handy for those times when you won’t necessarily trust the recipient.”
- eganist 6y ago
  it's funny because: 1. Citibank did this for a long time. They still might. I remember using this in the late 2000s for some online services at the time. 2. Apple and Google Pay both do this as well, though these are all one-time-use implementations. It's sold as this pretty revolutionary feature that others have done (in some capacity) for quite a while now.
  - robohoe 6y ago
    Bank of America and https://privacy.com/ https://privacy.com/ Have done this for years too.
    - armandhammer 6y ago
      BoA discontinued that service (ShopSafe) last year, and it had basically been abandoned for a few years before that since it required Flash and was never a part of their mobile app.
  - criddell 6y ago
    A feature isn't revolutionary until people use it. Apple didn't invent virtual numbers, but they have a better implementation than Citibank. It's Apple's MO.
TrinaryWorksToo 6y ago
Try Privacy.com
teekert 6y ago
I really like it that my bank allows me to refuse payment, or just set the payment limit per company (I would set this to 0). Or I could just delete my virtual MasterCard altogether. We need to be empowered against these practices. Btw, Very nice of Netflix to do this!
spurdoman77 6y ago
Report your old card stolen, and renew the card. Also makes sense to use virtual cards for future purchases.
- steelframe 6y ago
  > Report your old card stolen, and renew the card. As someone who shops online at a much wider diversity of vendors than amazon.com, My card actually gets compromised about once a year and needs its number changed. I don't mind the hassle because it forces me to update the payment method for my recurring charges. On more than one occasion when I re-evaluated whether I really still needed some random subscription, I decided that it wasn't worth it any more to me. On that note, I'm amazed how many accounts with outstanding balances have been next to impossible to close out by simply sending a physical check to an address. On the phone, they insist, "If you'll just give us your new credit card number, we'll get this all taken care of now." I respond, "I'm not giving you my credit card number because I don't trust that you'll actually stop charging me. I'm happy to send you a check in the mail to pay off my balance." Then it's often, "Uhhhhh, I don't know how to do that. My computer program requires that I enter your credit card number in this field to process. Please just give me your credit card number and stop making my life so difficult." By the time everything is said and done (and escalated), they always end up finding a way to accept a check in the mail.
fuddle 6y ago
It's probably worth reporting your card as lost and to get a new one. They won't be able to charge you then.
- ars 6y ago
  If only that were the case... But actually there is a service Credit Card companies offer which will automatically update your number with merchants who charge you regularly. Very helpful /s
gassiss 6y ago
There's a Brazilian credit card company that gives you a virtual credit card. You can generate as many new credit cards as you want, even multiple times a day, to use for online banking exclusively. I think privacy.com does a similar service, but I loved to have this feature for no extra cost. I assume it also benefits the CC company a bunch with happy customers and less labor costs since people will be calling less for this kind of situation.
tlobes 6y ago
I'm always curious if deceptive actions like these are approved by an individual, a committee, or are perhaps a byproduct of unrelated tasks driven by lazy oversight shrouded by process.
dghughes 6y ago
Mastercard seems to be leading the way in fighting this type of behaviour. As of April 2019 they require notification at the end of free trials sending the customer a receipt and cancellation instructions. And Mastercard are looking into preventing recurring charges that you try to cancel. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mastercard-cracks-down-on-retailers-who-turn-free-trials-into-paid-subscriptions-without-warning-2019-01-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mastercard-cracks-down-on-...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
myrandomcomment 6y ago
It is Amex so I am surprised. They do not give a crap about the merchant only members (from what I have seen) and this is a good thing. Call again, tell them you do not authorize any charges from rhapsody.com ever again and be done with it. They should just sort it. I have never had a bad experience with them. Years ago My wife and I where at LAX getting on a flight to London then connecting to Dublin. At the airport my wife released she forgot her card. Called. Agent said, I see you have a charge at this hotel in Dublin, is that where you are staying？ Arrived in Dublin at the hotel around 12 hours later and there was an envelope with my wife’s new card.
- sytelus 6y ago
  I used their online form to void charge which requires me to write justifications. I wrote a paragraph of it explaining that I didn’t authorized that charge and that I can’t even contact Rhapsody, because of bad phone number they have put in Amex system. They have checkbox that requires me to say if I ever authorized merchant in the past and if it was a subscription. I had to say yes to that checkbox because I did had their subscription like 8 years ago. They then flatly and simply refused to void those charges without giving me any reason whatsoever or letting me know how do I even avoid the future charges. I then filed appeal where I threatened to cancel the card and after yet another month of “review” they finally voided it. My card is at “Gold” level, I pay close to $200 in membership fees and I easily qualify for their Platinum level according to their frequent spam. It’s most certainly not member oriented.
  - myrandomcomment 6y ago
    Call. A human will sort it.
elif 6y ago
if you pay with paypal, you get a UI for managing payment permissions and merchants.

amelius 6y ago

There's an asymmetry whenever you sign up for something. It's always them who determine the terms. I think there should be more consumer protection.

balladeer 6y ago

This was a revelation sometimes back and it was Amex (relatively new in India) but I am sure it would be same for any credit card issuer. I had a VPS in Europe that I had emailed the support to cancel about a year ago and they had replied telling me I could do it myself (listed the steps) or they'd need another confirmation from me to go ahead and cancel. I forgot about it. Got charged some 40 Euro a year later. I was shocked. My first thought was a compromised card. But immediately afterwards I received invoice from VPS provider. I called the bank and asked them how did that happen. They said it's possible. Lucky for me the provider immediately reversed the charge. The thing is I had cancelled that Amex card almost a year before that charge had happened. It was still charged! I was baffled. Coming from a country where literally every credit card payment has to be authorised via an OTP or password (since as long as I can remember) it was a whole new world for me. Well, that cancelled card was charged again (almost a year after I had the last experience) when I shopped at AliExpress and forgot to switch to a new card while making the payment. This time I just paid the bill and went around Internet removing that cancelled card.

sumedh 6y ago
If the card was cancelled, where did you see the charge, did you see it on your new Amex card statement? India did not have the OTP option, RBI made it mandatory to prevent fraud.
- balladeer 6y ago
  Got an email. About the RBI bit - possibly, but I don't think I remember one without OTP or a password (it was verified by Visa I guess or something).
davchana 6y ago
I think international transactions have some way to skip the OTP thing.

Jd 6y ago

I started using privacy.com for this reason. You can spin up a separate card number for each transaction type with its own limit (e.g. $100/month or $200). You can also just turn them off at will.

input_sh 6y ago
Note: US-only at the moment, Privacy.com isn't available anywhere else.
- v7p1Qbt1im 6y ago
  There are other services, though not as advanced. In Europe you could use Revolut to create virtual disposable cards. They are more useful for one-time payments however. privacy.com seems like such a sleek solution.
ithkuil 6y ago
Looks great. Not available in my country :-(
sytelus 6y ago
privacy.com looks great. I think the only disadvantage is that you lose all the 2-5% cashback, travel benefits and so on. I wish they could produce card while keeping these benefits but still its good card to have for shady websites.
- jacoblambda 6y ago
  Depending on who your card is through, some companies started offering this. It's often just hidden in the web UI.
  - robohoe 6y ago
    Yep, Bank of America and Citi offer the same service. Not sure about others.

mywacaday 6y ago

Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.

thih9 6y ago
Thanks for sharing this. This sounds absurd and discourages me from supporting them. On the other hand I cancelled and re-enabled netflix a number of times. I’m currently subscribed and happy that I can change it anytime.
adamtulinius 6y ago
Actually we have such a law in the EU. Not sure what it's called, but I'm sure it exists. I believe the wording to be something like it has to be possible to cancel in a similar way you signed up.
- elcomet 6y ago
  If it exists, it is not followed. In France, Le Monde (most famous daily newspaper) requires you to send a paper mail (and not a regular mail, but a registered mail, which costs around 5-10€) to cancel your subscription. Even if you subscribed on the website, for a 100% online subscription. It's really shady.
  - erk__ 6y ago
    It may not be followed in every country, but at least in Denmark the "forbrugerombudsmanden" slams down on things like that, I think that they recently sent out a message that online services should be able to be unsubscribed online as well.
    - martin_bech 6y ago
      Also that you should sent out an option to cancel, before each withdraw for the membership.

lovehashbrowns 6y ago

It's so frustrating because my credit card declines the most random things. But when a service charges me twice in one week after I've been subscribed and charged the same amount once a month for years, the charge goes through and I have to go through hoops to get that money back. And credit cards do this other obnoxious thing where they update merchants when you get a new credit card. It would be great if they didn't do that because then you'd remember that you are paying for certain services you never use because you'd get a payment declined email. But nah credit card companies just let those scumbag merchants continue their shadow charges under the guise of it being more convenient. Certain services like energy bills, phone bills. Sure, update the merchant with the new credit card. But a gym!? Gtfo with that trash.

sfj 6y ago
Why don't you just read your fucking statement?
marcoperaza 6y ago
I'd rather they update all of my merchants instead of assume that I want to cancel this or that. Citi has a nice feature that shows you all of your recurring charges. Maybe try to use a feature like that? I also have it set up to send a text message to my phone any time my card is used.
- lovehashbrowns 6y ago
  Didn't know about that citi feature! I'll look for it, ty. I do have alerts for charges >$x amount but it rarely gets triggered.
  - marcoperaza 6y ago
    I set x=0 to get all of the alerts. I also found that the text notifications are more reliable than the app-based notifications.

Geezus_42 6y ago

https://privacy.com/join/5FPVD https://privacy.com/join/5FPVD Give every merchant an individual card and kill the card when they won't stop charging you. P. S. There's also a browser extension that will let you generate a card at the time of checkout and autofill the information.

Operyl 6y ago
While I love Privacy, the reality is a lot of merchants block these kind of virtual cards. Also, really, a throwaway account to post a referral link?
- qmarchi 6y ago
  Personal anecdote: I've only had one that didn't accept a privacy card, my rent. Other than that, it's been golden.
  - Operyl 6y ago
    I’ve had a good number block me from using them, typically in industries where fraud and chargebacks run rampant. I.e. gaming services.

tialaramex 6y ago

> The credit card companies literally have no control over who can charge us. That's not quite true. The card network can refuse a merchant for any reason, constantly making bogus charges would probably be a good reason for the network to refuse them and that's likely to be the result. Of course you don't see if your bogus charge was reflective of 0.01% of the charges from this merchant or 99.9% However as I've explained on HN a few times there's an important distinction between two separate payment card processes: Authorization and Settlement. Authorization is the one with PINs and online referral and even getting a call from your bank about "possible fraud". Authorization protects the bank from fraud by customers (you're a necessary evil to them) and merchants by automatically collecting evidence that both authorized this to happen. Once upon a time that meant taking an "impression" and a few merchants still do that, today it may mean redirecting customers to a half-arsed HTTPS site or an EMV PIN terminal. Settlement moves money. The merchant tells the network that they want $85.26 from card #1234567890 and usually that will just result in them receiving $85.26 These two systems aren't tied together. If there are two authorizations against your card this week for $20.00 and $35.26 but also three settlements for $19.86, $209.42 and $20.00 respectively, it's likely no alarm bells go off, this is fine, you pay $249.28 One reason it is this way is that while Settlement is essential to the idea in the first place (if the merchants don't get money what's the point?), Authorization is dozens of extra things tacked on over time and so each has to be optional or the system would fail. This means important safeguards in Authorization don't actually safeguard you, only your issuer (in your case Amex) For example: Modern Authorization schemes are replay resistant. When you pay with an EMV card the merchant gets a one-time "cryptogram" that isn't reusable. Buying a $5 product, walking out of the store, then realising you needed two, so you go back and buy another $5 product results in two entirely different cryptograms for the two Authorizations. The store can't present a third Authorization because it would need a new cryptogram. BUT Settlement isn't replay resistant. When (not if, this really happens) an IT mistake results in running all the Settlement for a merchant twice, customers just all get charged twice, again no flags are raised automatically, it will take until either somebody confesses their error or more likely angry customers start calling their issuers to complain. For individuals the only advice is: Check your statements, demand that line items you can't explain be reversed, and try to pick an issuer who is on your side.

6y ago

simonlbn 6y ago

This is why I use Paypal for recurring services when possible. One list of all the items, and you can cancel the payment there easily. Dodgy companies like the New York Times even do offline transactions to successfully charge canceled cards. I was able to cancel it by changing payment to Paypal.

ehsankia 6y ago
It's funny that you mention NYT and Paypal. I signed up to support, but upon finding out that they still show ads to subscribed users, I wanted to cancel. Turns out you have to call them simply to cancel your subscription, which is the worst dark pattern of all. I just swapped my subscription to Paypal, then blocked it in paypal. They then spent the next month sending me 8 emails asking me to fix my payment, which I all sent to the spam folder. I'm not a big fan of paypal, but definitely having control over your recurring payments is the best feature.

chrischen 6y ago

Actually stripe supports a visa and mastercard service that automatically updates the card number if it gets changed.

g_p 6y ago

I understand why card companies struggle to implement this while retaining good relations with merchants, but this does seem an opportunity for Stripe or similar. You can "log into" a London TFL "account" that is effectively just your credit/debit card. That means that, at least in theory, Stripe could let you log in to a "shadow" account as a card holder. I think the problem is that Stripe (and others) don't want to upset merchants by making it possible for people to cancel "fixed term" subscriptions, where the merchant claims the customer has entered a contract to pay for X months. Agreed entirely though - I would really like to see privacy.com style "limited authentication value/merchant card numbers" take off more and become a "default". This has added privacy benefits too, as it means for anyone other than the CC issuer, it will become very difficult to link digital transactions.

dwighttk 6y ago

your credit card 8 years ago had an expiration date beyond 2020?

nadavami 6y ago
The major credit card companies have a service where they can notify the merchant of the new details when the card expires. I believe Visa calls it Account Updater. https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/account-updater https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/account-update...
- dwighttk 6y ago
  can I get the opposite of that?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

digitalengineer 6y ago

“ Apple Card has awesome features but the most important of them all, at leasts from a security standpoint, is probably the ability to generate virtual card numbers on demand, which will come in handy for those times when you won’t necessarily trust the recipient.”

eganist 6y ago
it's funny because: 1. Citibank did this for a long time. They still might. I remember using this in the late 2000s for some online services at the time. 2. Apple and Google Pay both do this as well, though these are all one-time-use implementations. It's sold as this pretty revolutionary feature that others have done (in some capacity) for quite a while now.
- robohoe 6y ago
  Bank of America and https://privacy.com/ https://privacy.com/ Have done this for years too.
  - armandhammer 6y ago
    BoA discontinued that service (ShopSafe) last year, and it had basically been abandoned for a few years before that since it required Flash and was never a part of their mobile app.
- criddell 6y ago
  A feature isn't revolutionary until people use it. Apple didn't invent virtual numbers, but they have a better implementation than Citibank. It's Apple's MO.

TrinaryWorksToo 6y ago

Try Privacy.com

teekert 6y ago

I really like it that my bank allows me to refuse payment, or just set the payment limit per company (I would set this to 0). Or I could just delete my virtual MasterCard altogether. We need to be empowered against these practices. Btw, Very nice of Netflix to do this!

spurdoman77 6y ago

Report your old card stolen, and renew the card. Also makes sense to use virtual cards for future purchases.

steelframe 6y ago
> Report your old card stolen, and renew the card. As someone who shops online at a much wider diversity of vendors than amazon.com, My card actually gets compromised about once a year and needs its number changed. I don't mind the hassle because it forces me to update the payment method for my recurring charges. On more than one occasion when I re-evaluated whether I really still needed some random subscription, I decided that it wasn't worth it any more to me. On that note, I'm amazed how many accounts with outstanding balances have been next to impossible to close out by simply sending a physical check to an address. On the phone, they insist, "If you'll just give us your new credit card number, we'll get this all taken care of now." I respond, "I'm not giving you my credit card number because I don't trust that you'll actually stop charging me. I'm happy to send you a check in the mail to pay off my balance." Then it's often, "Uhhhhh, I don't know how to do that. My computer program requires that I enter your credit card number in this field to process. Please just give me your credit card number and stop making my life so difficult." By the time everything is said and done (and escalated), they always end up finding a way to accept a check in the mail.

fuddle 6y ago

It's probably worth reporting your card as lost and to get a new one. They won't be able to charge you then.

ars 6y ago
If only that were the case... But actually there is a service Credit Card companies offer which will automatically update your number with merchants who charge you regularly. Very helpful /s

gassiss 6y ago

There's a Brazilian credit card company that gives you a virtual credit card. You can generate as many new credit cards as you want, even multiple times a day, to use for online banking exclusively. I think privacy.com does a similar service, but I loved to have this feature for no extra cost. I assume it also benefits the CC company a bunch with happy customers and less labor costs since people will be calling less for this kind of situation.

tlobes 6y ago

I'm always curious if deceptive actions like these are approved by an individual, a committee, or are perhaps a byproduct of unrelated tasks driven by lazy oversight shrouded by process.

dghughes 6y ago

Mastercard seems to be leading the way in fighting this type of behaviour. As of April 2019 they require notification at the end of free trials sending the customer a receipt and cancellation instructions. And Mastercard are looking into preventing recurring charges that you try to cancel. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mastercard-cracks-down-on-retailers-who-turn-free-trials-into-paid-subscriptions-without-warning-2019-01-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mastercard-cracks-down-on-...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

myrandomcomment 6y ago

It is Amex so I am surprised. They do not give a crap about the merchant only members (from what I have seen) and this is a good thing. Call again, tell them you do not authorize any charges from rhapsody.com ever again and be done with it. They should just sort it. I have never had a bad experience with them. Years ago My wife and I where at LAX getting on a flight to London then connecting to Dublin. At the airport my wife released she forgot her card. Called. Agent said, I see you have a charge at this hotel in Dublin, is that where you are staying？ Arrived in Dublin at the hotel around 12 hours later and there was an envelope with my wife’s new card.

sytelus 6y ago
I used their online form to void charge which requires me to write justifications. I wrote a paragraph of it explaining that I didn’t authorized that charge and that I can’t even contact Rhapsody, because of bad phone number they have put in Amex system. They have checkbox that requires me to say if I ever authorized merchant in the past and if it was a subscription. I had to say yes to that checkbox because I did had their subscription like 8 years ago. They then flatly and simply refused to void those charges without giving me any reason whatsoever or letting me know how do I even avoid the future charges. I then filed appeal where I threatened to cancel the card and after yet another month of “review” they finally voided it. My card is at “Gold” level, I pay close to $200 in membership fees and I easily qualify for their Platinum level according to their frequent spam. It’s most certainly not member oriented.
- myrandomcomment 6y ago
  Call. A human will sort it.

elif 6y ago

if you pay with paypal, you get a UI for managing payment permissions and merchants.