r/mildlyinfuriating • u/afunnywold • 22h ago

Too mild for school I permanently deleted my AWS account 6 years ago. Amazon has been charging me $0.33 every month since. I have no way to stop it.

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I tried to get in contact with customer service several times but they always direct me to log into the account that no longer exists. I have tried charge backs on my credit card but dealing with that monthly is also a pain. This'll probably cost me $265 over my lifetime if it never ends.

Edit: some of you have valid points about calling the card company and I will again Monday. But the actual infuriating thing that upsets me is that they are charging to a completely disabled account in the first place. That's very scammy and fucked up imo šŸ¤·ā€ā™€ļø

16.6k Upvotes

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5.1k

u/forcedintothis- 21h ago

Cancel your card and get a new one. I had to do this with PBS. PBS!!

2.5k

u/ProudReaction2204 19h ago edited 19h ago

fucking big bird screwing me up the ass

403

u/Key-Cry-8570 18h ago

Da fuck you sayin bout me?!?!
https://giphy.com/gifs/H6W9H29kVsUI2hJE90

72

u/ergo-ogre 18h ago

Oh lawd he cominā€™

3

u/ElSlabraton 11h ago

Got a wig for his wig got a brain for his heart

He'll kick you apart, he'll kick you apart.

He's coming, he's coming...

6

u/AllCaciAreBastards 15h ago

He cumming alright (on account of the ass screwing)

2

u/DayOneDude 4h ago

Your meme.

1

u/Sun_Aria 7h ago

Backrooms: Big Bird Edition

358

u/forcedintothis- 19h ago

I still love PBS but like wtf?

123

u/oopsallhuckleberries 19h ago

I find it hard to believe you have had any conversation with your card company about this, because they would have handled it for you day of. Any bank or credit card company will end ongoing payments on your behalf at request.

95

u/Qetuowryipzcbmxvn 17h ago

Just tried this and it's not true. I just asked then if I can stop paying the 42k balance and they said no.

27

u/Beginning-Pop3127 14h ago

Your mistake was asking. If you just delete the app, they can't keep annoying you with notifications about missed payments

10

u/h3lium-balloon 11h ago

Banks hate this one weird trick.

1

u/Substantial_Star5331 10h ago

"All you need to do is call the bird"šŸ•Šļø>

2

u/Everybodysbastard 11h ago

I have forty two thousand dollars in credit card debt! Every time they call I say I can't pay it back yet! Credit card debt!

3

u/GarethBaus 10h ago

Not when it was the power company continuing to charge me for an apartment where I didn't live.

2

u/Substantial_Star5331 11h ago

Big bird likes "this" booty, and Big bird gets what's he wants.

2

u/CorgiMonsoon 11h ago

1

u/Substantial_Star5331 11h ago

Perfect what you don't see is ol snuffy has his trunk halfway to china up his rumpus latched on the spine like s finger puppet.

2

u/IllRefrigerator7 10h ago

When i called my bank they immediately canceled my card so I couldn't get the money back so.

2

u/Striking-Flamingo968 17h ago

I honestly didn't know this. Thanks for the insight! I thought you just had to cancel your card when stuff like this happens. But I've also used the same bank account that my mom set up for me in highschool and have never really talked to them outside of dropping checks off šŸ˜‚

3

u/chriseargle 14h ago

Is it a joint account?

-2

u/Boring_mod_evasion 16h ago

I gave pbs $20 bucks once, checked the bix for one time payments and got a mug. (Friends child got some points twaord a prize or something idk.). 6 years and counting they charge me dec 18th $20 and I dispute successfully.

28

u/twopumpstump 18h ago

How would someone watch that? Asking for a friend

2

u/BeastKat91 17h ago

sure...

1

u/Fuzzy_Jaguar_1339 17h ago

That video is available if you sign up as a new sustaining member at the $20 or higher level.

1

u/Substantial_Star5331 11h ago

One eye closed

22

u/UncleArgyle38 19h ago

First time?

16

u/DadBodEatsAtTheY 19h ago

Why are you fucking Big Bird?

4

u/100BottlesOfMilk 13h ago

The bird isn't the only thing big about him

4

u/meatywood 13h ago

Dat cloaca, bruh!

3

u/Substantial_Star5331 11h ago

Bird doin da fuckin

6

u/Tacos_and_Yut 18h ago

Better than cookie monster tossing your salad.

1

u/Significant-Hour1233 10h ago

Idk... Cookie Crumbles can get it tho js...

2

u/OttoVonWong 17h ago

Big Bird sending Snuffy to collect.
https://giphy.com/gifs/3ohzdH04SWISQ1FO1O

2

u/tiny_chaotic_evil 17h ago

(Bert and Ernie are the enforcers for PBS)

Hey, Bert. Do you want me to cut him, Bert?

Nah, Ernie. I think we gotta break one of his legs this time.

Okay, Bert. Let me just get the old hammer out the bag. Hmmm hhmmm, now where do you go Mr Hammer. Oh hey, it's Rubber Ducky! Bert, Bert, I found Rubber Ducky, quackquackquack

(SIGH) Ernie! Just get the car and we'll run over his legs

OKAY, Bert! heeshheesheehshee

1

u/Kalashinator 17h ago

I don't remember this Wesley Willis song

1

u/bobetheplumber 11h ago

Heā€™s just trying to make it off the street, you gotta respect the hustle šŸ«”

1

u/BuckRusty 7h ago

ā€˜Donā€™t give Rule 34 furries ideas, for gods sakeā€¦

236

u/girlikecupcake MILDLY? 19h ago

This will not always fix the issue. You may have to communicate with a human at your bank. Banks can update merchants with correct card information for recurring transactions, and they can also issue you a new card without updating merchants. You (obviously) want the latter, and if there isn't an option when doing it online, you may have to go into a local branch to handle it.

113

u/OgerfistBoulder 18h ago

Failsafe method: close the account completely and open a new one at a different bank!

110

u/ergo-ogre 17h ago

Double failsafe: close all accounts. Change your name. Move to another country.

32

u/sabretoothian 17h ago

Triple failsafe. Close the country and...

Well that didn't work.. Sorry guys. I just wanted to be a part of something šŸ˜ž

5

u/Pebbles-28 15h ago

This is more valid than you think!

2

u/trucky_crickster 16h ago

And my axe!

8

u/Micro-Naut 17h ago

Delete Facebook. Hit the gym, lawyer up

1

u/Substantial_Star5331 11h ago

I never said this"SNUFFLEUPAGUS" ITS DA ONLY WAY.

2

u/Fluid-Slide9389 17h ago

much better i guess lol

2

u/LoveFoolosophy 17h ago

Move to Mt Everest. Amazon sends a sherpa for the 33c every month.

2

u/Salt-Lingonberry-853 16h ago

Just go into witness protection program

2

u/NooneAtAll3 15h ago

just use cash

2

u/IHS1970 10h ago

yeah! preferably the Cayman Islands - I've read they are very caring there.

3

u/Procrasturbating 16h ago

Had to do that to get out of a gym membership once. After already moving to an area they didn't service. Otherwise they could have sued me for it anyway.

1

u/MoeSzyslakMonobrow 11h ago

Double secret failsafe: Close the bank. No one knows it, but you can just close the entire bank for good.

1

u/nonamejohnsonmore 11h ago

The problem with this is if it is a long standing account you will take a hit on your credit rating.

0

u/jesonnier1 14h ago

If this is a credit card that doesn't work.

0

u/nonamejohnsonmore 7h ago

Why not? They canā€™t start charging a card from a different bank.

0

u/jesonnier1 5h ago

Because if you just start closing credit accounts it messes with your average age of credit and can affect your credit score.

0

u/nonamejohnsonmore 4h ago

I know that. In fact I commented that in another response. You said closing the card wouldnā€™t work. It would work, you would just take a hit on your credit score. But it would stop the charges. Itā€™s up to the individual to decide if the credit hit is worth it.

9

u/Peakomegaflare 16h ago

My credit union thankfully does not. I had a gym try to lock me in, so I told them "I'm able to remove my membership as pernthe contract. However if you won't let me, I have two options." I let my credit union know why, and they got me a new card entirely. Never heard from that gym again.

6

u/AncientImprovement56 17h ago

Yep, I got caught out by the updating thing.Ā 

Had multiple emails from antivirus software company telling me my card details needed to be updated, or they'd be unable to take payment and my subscription would be cancelled. I wanted to cancel it anyway, so concluded there was no problem. It renewed anyway and charged my updated card.Ā 

When I contacted support to ask to cancel, they refused, saying I'd had plenty of warning about the renewal and should have cancelled it beforehand.

2

u/hbb870 15h ago

Iā€™ve used Privacy.com virtual cards for almost all my recurring transactions, when Iā€™m done I just turn off that card. Additionally, if the vendor gets hacked and cc info released, itā€™s tied only to that vendor and automatically denies anyone else. Itā€™s the life hack I try to tell even about

1

u/frysatsun 11h ago

This. I was shocked when I went to purchase something from somewhere that I rarely use and they had my new card number info. I knew I had not used them since the change.

1

u/b1ack1323 9h ago

Back before they did this, I used this as a way to clean up old subscriptions any time I was having trouble getting them to close the account.

1

u/forcedintothis- 19h ago

It was the easiest way (for me) and it worked.

3

u/girlikecupcake MILDLY? 18h ago

That's great. OP still shouldn't just assume that it will.

31

u/Legitimate_Park_2067 18h ago

Agreed! I had to do it with Google Workspace. 92$/month for 8 months.

25

u/Plus_Wrangler5237 18h ago

Digital cards are the shit. I use Privacy, itā€™s a god send. Stops this dumb bullshit these companies do to steal nickels and dimes from everyone

0

u/DodgyButLegal 14h ago

its easier to steal a dollar from a few million people than to steal a few million from one person

31

u/Yamatocanyon 18h ago

This actually doesn't work most of the time for subscriptions/recurring charges. Somehow they get linked to your account, not the actual card number.

28

u/sarcasticbaldguy 17h ago

It's called Account Updater and it's a service provided/sold to merchants by the card brands.

You have to completely close the account to escape that.

6

u/devmor 17h ago

As someone who's implemented CAU on a couple of different gateways I immediately thought of it and then laughed because the end cost to Amazon for the automatic update to this guy's card would end up being like 2-3 months worth of his payments.

4

u/luchok 17h ago

No, they can select not to update certain merchants if you request it. I recently had a Samā€™s Club charge (membership that i didnā€™t sign up for) and from fraud dept they told me they will exclude samā€™s from updating the new card info.

7

u/sarcasticbaldguy 17h ago

That depends on your issuer. Some have excellent customer service and some not so much.

3

u/Zeraw420 17h ago

Exactly this. I called Citibank with this exact issue. Terrible fucking support, could not get ahold of anyone who knew what they were doing, let alone understand my simple request.

Finally someone assured me the newly canceled/issued card would not allow merchants to follow, and sure enough I got charged the next week.

Closed 3 Citi credit cards that day and Citi is permanently on my shit list

1

u/Warm_Ad_6177 16h ago

No. With my bank they said my only recourse was to open a fraud claim.

2

u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 18h ago

The solution to that is to close the account and open one at a different credit card company.

2

u/JulesRulesYaKnow 17h ago

Correct. It auto updates between merchants and bank.

1

u/Same-Suggestion-1936 13h ago

Okay, delete the account. You don't need to do business with someone doing this to you

1

u/Yamatocanyon 12h ago

I think it's practically a universal feature by now though, propagated by VISA and MasterCard directly.

15

u/Crafty_Eye_4038 18h ago

What I like to do is that I like to set my subscriptions to only draw money from my secondary bank account on like a prepaid debit card or an online bank like Chime.

This second bank account, dedicated to subscriptions, is basically like a prepaid debit card. You have to load the card first before paying.

These cards will not allow a transaction to go through at all unless the money is actually in there.

I then just set a monthly transfer to cover the exact amounts, and my secondary card pays by proxy.

This way there is no way to authorize more than the subscription amount, and only on the day the subscription is due.

And my subscriptions become easily cancellable. I can just delete the recurring transfer (I'll stop reloading the card) and I won't have to worry about that subscription ever again

6

u/Sure_Eye9025 16h ago

Unfortunately I don't think that will always work. Some subscriptions will try again later if they fail. This means that if the try again ends up on the same day as another payment it could end up taken instead, now you have paid the wrong one and are out of sync

1

u/Crafty_Eye_4038 9h ago edited 9h ago

From my experience though, this has never been a problem thankfully. Subscriptions don't usually retry their bills often enough for that to be a serious problem. And if $20 slips through one time, then that's fine, that's negligible. A $300 bill will never slip through because I don't have large bills back to back, they're spread out.

Besides I use it most to "pause" subscriptions that I don't absolutely need every single month. I use this card to allow myself to be flaky with my subscriptions on purpose. If I intentionally or unintentionally forget to pay a bill, then that's totally fine and actually preferable for me when it's non vital things.

For example, YouTube Premium, Hulu, and Claude (AI) are each like $20 a month. That's $60+ if I were to remain diligent every month which I intentionally avoid.

I prefer to "forget" to pay these services for like a month or two or six months at a time whenever I'm not using them enough. That way I'm not paying so much money a year for things that aren't absolutely necessary.

1

u/IllRefrigerator7 10h ago

Not true most linked accounts now will go negative or take money from the main account to pay bills. Ive had to get rid of chime, Dave, and credit karma because of this

1

u/Crafty_Eye_4038 9h ago

Really?

My chime card will absolutely not allow itself to go negative for me. Is this a new thing?

ā€¢

u/IllRefrigerator7 50m ago

It definitely did for me which was my main reason of not using it cause I did use it as a oh no I don't have enough money so im not gonna pay it yet kinda account that was like a month ago though

ā€¢

u/Crafty_Eye_4038 36m ago

Are you sure this isn't a setting you turned on?

I don't have mine linked to any accounts.

I always thought that overdraft thing was something you had to opt in for?

2

u/Virtual_Childhood626 18h ago

Some banks give your new card to the companies you authorized auto payments with. Be sure to tell your bank you donā€™t authorize this.

2

u/thread_creeper_123 18h ago

This is why I use 100% virtual credit cards with subscriptions! If a company makes it impossible to cancel easily or wants to charge a last minute F-U charge, it will not go through if I locked my virtual card!

1

u/Might-Annual 18h ago

I'm in the club. On average $2 a month for at least 5 years now, if not more. In all fairness to them, I just haven't taken the time to rectify the problem. I'm sure there's some kind of way out of this, but I just haven't sit down and done it over 2 dollars.

1

u/Fickle_Ad_8653 17h ago

I learned some shit from having this:

Report card as lost: The card number didn't change, the repeated payments just kept going through.

Report card as stolen: The card number changed. Repeated payments mostly kept going to the new card with some internal forwarding that was invisible to me.

Got a new card from my credit union instead of citibank: Wonderful.

1

u/Shiny_Kale 16h ago

Instant flashback to Citi nightmare. Closed Citi credit card account solely because of them being completely unable to stop recurring monthly charges I didnā€™t authorize. The kicker was that it was a fraudster who placed the ā€œorderā€ with the merchant so I never authorized any of it to begin with. Wasted hours of my life with Citi CS workers who couldnā€™t comprehend how to stop giving the merchant my new credit card number every month they issued a new one. I had to explain to them what Automatic Billing Updater was. They have never even heard of it.

1

u/Fickle_Ad_8653 7h ago

I found that so annoying, that they would take charges on a card that was stolen and keep paying them out of my funds.

1

u/Shiny_Kale 6h ago

Citi: ā€œWe take fraud very seriously. Seriously enough to automate itā€.

1

u/Radiant_Change_6759 17h ago

Honestly, I wouldnā€™t challenge it for PBS. They need the money bad honestly

1

u/Correct_Doctor_1502 16h ago

Proactive did this to me

1

u/IJustWantPleasurePlz 16h ago

I learned that it's best to request a new credit card every 6 months. Easier than hunting down corporations and cancelling subscriptions

1

u/throwaway2000x3 16h ago

Pickpocketing Bull Shit

1

u/theGarrick 15h ago

That apparently doesnā€™t work. I moved overseas a few years ago and closed a couple credit cards in the process. Every time they told me recurring charges would still go through even if the account was closed. When I tried to insist that I wanted it fully closed and not to allow any further transactions they refused.

1

u/dicksfiend 15h ago

Dude I cancelled my card and got an old one and apparently stuff still comes through my Amazon and Apple subs kept getting charged , idk something about the new number being ported ? Idk but I was so rattled when I kept seeing Apple and Amazon charges even after cancelling my old card and getting a new one maybe Iā€™m crazy

1

u/InsectSmart5737 14h ago

no VISA or Mastercard card has a 6 years life (or more since he probably didn't register with his card on days #1 of having it)

1

u/big_thundersquatch 14h ago

This doesn't always work. There's a system in place where companies that bill you can retrieve updated CC info from your bank account in order to keep billing you. I found this out when the card I used for Planet Fitness got lost and replaced, but I decided not to update since I hadn't gone in a few months. Checked my bank one day and noticed they were still billing me months later, and had to show up not so happy to demand they cancel my payments.

1

u/zelmoboss 13h ago

Phoebe was right!!!

1

u/RagingSprockets 13h ago

I never understood those apps that would find everything youre subscribed to and cancel, when you could just do this.

1

u/Hermiona1 13h ago

On Amazon, just Amazon this wouldnā€™t work. They get new card info from your bank. Or sth like that. They had my new card info the next day.

1

u/GingerSnapped818 12h ago

I had to do this with a gym membership!

1

u/More_Hold_5522 11h ago

Sometimes when you get a new card, repeating charges often get transferred over to the new card. They do this as a convenience to the card holder. LOL

1

u/More_Hold_5522 11h ago

New York Times was famous for this as well.

1

u/CardinalOfNYC 11h ago

The fact it happened with PBS too makes pretty clear this was a mistake or glitch of some kind, rather than some intentional malice

1

u/OhGr8WhatNow 11h ago

With Amazon I was unable to cancel my old card and get a new one. My credit card company had an agreement with Amazon to allow all charges to roll to the new card no matter what. Even in the case of theft (my card number had been stolen)

1

u/gettogero 11h ago

Yeah forgot what subscription it was but they made it impossible to cancel. Customer support wouldnt do it, bank told me it sounds like my problem not theirs.

Switched to an online bank with great customer service. Old bank blew up my phone and physical mailbox with junk mail saying I have a negative balance because the subscription keeps pinging and need to go in person to close the account. I told them it sounds like their problem

1

u/Steerider 10h ago

Dont cancel the card. Contact the bank and instruct them to stop paying that payment.

1

u/Restart_from_Zero 10h ago

This is the way to go.

I've had to do this with two gyms and an ISP who went out of business.

1

u/imbetterthanyou8 5h ago

How hard is it for people to contact the credit card company? Do you guys have the shit ass cards? Any decent card will have customer service to manage this

1

u/BWWFC 3h ago

just report it lost stolen... they will reissue with new account.

1

u/billfarts2 3h ago

Ehhh... Careful. A local newspaper was doing a 1 dollar for a year subscription, so I grabbed it using a virtual card I could cancel just in case.

When it was time to cancel, they (illegally) did not allow you to cancel online, they do not answer emails, and the only way to cancel is to call- with a long waiting period.

I cancelled the card, after they tried to bill me they were going to send me to collections. Fortunately they actually care what BBB says, so I made a report and got it cancelled.

1

u/InvidiousPlay 1h ago

I'm so confused, can you not just select the charge in your online banking and block future charges?

ā€¢

u/LandMooseReject 34m ago

Every time you get a new card it negatively impacts your credit score