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I've been told this by credit card customer support. In several instances over the last 3-4 years I've disputed charges from companies I have no relationship w

I've been told this by credit card customer support. In several instances over the last 3-4 years I've disputed charges from companies I have no relationship with, and as part of the dispute process been told I need to reach out to these companies to prevent future recurring charges. Calling a company I've never heard of to try to get them to stop charging me sounds likely to lead to further problems rather than resolving them, but I digress. On the other hand, I've switched over to using a bank that gives me fine-grained control over virtual cards and ACH accounts. I can create a "pocket" for a vendor or a class of charges, create an associated virtual card, and put a specific amount of money into that pocket. I can enable or disable an "overdraft protection" per pocket that will pull funds from another pocket if I run out. And I can close those pockets as well. This is great for the subscriptions that make it hard to cancel. You know, the places: "Click this button to subscribe, auto renewing", but "If you want to cancel, call this number between 8am and 5pm". I had a couple newspaper subscriptions on dedicated pockets, and after notifying their subscriptions dept that I wanted them to cancel it and was told to call a person about it, I just closed the pocket. I have gotten notifications about their continued attempted charges, but they haven't gone through.

morpheuskafka 5y ago
What bank is this? I'm using Privacy.com to do this with debit cards, but I've never heard of anything that lets you do it for ACH.
- basch 5y ago
  I searched google for the word pocket, and One came up https://www.onefinance.com/features/ https://www.onefinance.com/features/
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    Yup, OneFinance is awesome. A true replacement for Simple Bank
- linsomniac 5y ago
  As another reply surmised, it is OneFinance. Been with them for around 3 months as my primary bank after Simple got acquired by BBVA which got acquired by PNC. I've been very happy with them. If you decide to sign up, check to see if you have a friend that has an account, you can both get $50 on your first direct deposit. Slide into my DMs if you don't have any friends. :-D
  - morpheuskafka 5y ago
    I’ll take a referral and thanks for letting me know which company it was! (my email is in profile)
- resynthesize 5y ago
  hey - One employee and engineer here. happy to answer questions if anyone has them!
thatcat 5y ago
How did you find a bank that gives you that level of control?
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  OneFinancial
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ehPReth 5y ago
Is there anything like this for Canada?
throw63738 5y ago
Pretty common in Europe. Whitelists, blacklists, limits, SMS confirmations... You can use EU card in US with account nominated in USD.
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
That's pretty cool. Name of the bank?
gowld 5y ago
> told I need to reach out to these companies to prevent future recurring charges. "I did. They are continuing to make fraudulent charges."
- pc86 5y ago
  Why do people always jump immediately to lying? The bank can't require you to do this. Just say you won't. Say you might do that but if you hang up without resolution your next call is to the police for identity theft (as someone else suggested). But if you want to make a habit of lying to bank employees that's going to end up biting you in the ass sooner or later.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> told I need to reach out to these companies to prevent future recurring charges This is a request by the bank. If they keep letting through fraudulent charges, they can keep paying for them.
marcosdumay 5y ago
If my bank told me something like that, I would go call the police next. Maybe banks have some extra rights on your country, but that is actively collaborating with fraud.
jdeibele 5y ago
I live in Oregon but changed my address on wsj.com to a California address so I could cancel without having to talk to anybody. In 2018, a law went into effect that says that if you can sign up online, you have to be allowed to cancel online. But only California has this law AFAIK. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/companies-must-let-customers-cancel-subscriptions-online-california-law-says/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/companies-mu...
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I used my credit card a few times and got burned, there is no way I give my number directly to anyone now. Especially Google was running my ads for a week after cancelling and I ended up paying almost $2000 more than I had planned (yes, this is in their ToS). Paypal is a decent intermediary that makes it easy to cancel any subscription effortlessly. Your startup doesn't offer Paypal subscriptions? Too bad for you, I won't use your service. It is completely unacceptable to shift the burden of dealing with this crap to the customer. This kind of hostile behavior shouldn't be tolerated even in the 90s when you were trying to cancel your NYT subscription, and there is no place for it now. In order to convince me to buy your service, you need to attract me with good conditions. "Free trial, credit card required" is not one of them. I don't care that much about free trial, what I want is to be able to cancel my subscription without your kind permission to do so.

morpheuskafka 5y ago

What bank is this? I'm using Privacy.com to do this with debit cards, but I've never heard of anything that lets you do it for ACH.

basch 5y ago
I searched google for the word pocket, and One came up https://www.onefinance.com/features/ https://www.onefinance.com/features/
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Yup, OneFinance is awesome. A true replacement for Simple Bank
linsomniac 5y ago
As another reply surmised, it is OneFinance. Been with them for around 3 months as my primary bank after Simple got acquired by BBVA which got acquired by PNC. I've been very happy with them. If you decide to sign up, check to see if you have a friend that has an account, you can both get $50 on your first direct deposit. Slide into my DMs if you don't have any friends. :-D
- morpheuskafka 5y ago
  I’ll take a referral and thanks for letting me know which company it was! (my email is in profile)
resynthesize 5y ago
hey - One employee and engineer here. happy to answer questions if anyone has them!

thatcat 5y ago

How did you find a bank that gives you that level of control?

imwillofficial 5y ago
OneFinancial

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ehPReth 5y ago

Is there anything like this for Canada?

throw63738 5y ago

Pretty common in Europe. Whitelists, blacklists, limits, SMS confirmations... You can use EU card in US with account nominated in USD.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

That's pretty cool. Name of the bank?

gowld 5y ago

> told I need to reach out to these companies to prevent future recurring charges. "I did. They are continuing to make fraudulent charges."

pc86 5y ago
Why do people always jump immediately to lying? The bank can't require you to do this. Just say you won't. Say you might do that but if you hang up without resolution your next call is to the police for identity theft (as someone else suggested). But if you want to make a habit of lying to bank employees that's going to end up biting you in the ass sooner or later.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> told I need to reach out to these companies to prevent future recurring charges This is a request by the bank. If they keep letting through fraudulent charges, they can keep paying for them.

marcosdumay 5y ago

If my bank told me something like that, I would go call the police next. Maybe banks have some extra rights on your country, but that is actively collaborating with fraud.

jdeibele 5y ago

I live in Oregon but changed my address on wsj.com to a California address so I could cancel without having to talk to anybody. In 2018, a law went into effect that says that if you can sign up online, you have to be allowed to cancel online. But only California has this law AFAIK. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/companies-must-let-customers-cancel-subscriptions-online-california-law-says/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/companies-mu...

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

I used my credit card a few times and got burned, there is no way I give my number directly to anyone now. Especially Google was running my ads for a week after cancelling and I ended up paying almost $2000 more than I had planned (yes, this is in their ToS). Paypal is a decent intermediary that makes it easy to cancel any subscription effortlessly. Your startup doesn't offer Paypal subscriptions? Too bad for you, I won't use your service. It is completely unacceptable to shift the burden of dealing with this crap to the customer. This kind of hostile behavior shouldn't be tolerated even in the 90s when you were trying to cancel your NYT subscription, and there is no place for it now. In order to convince me to buy your service, you need to attract me with good conditions. "Free trial, credit card required" is not one of them. I don't care that much about free trial, what I want is to be able to cancel my subscription without your kind permission to do so.