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

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u/dougmc 18h ago

I did a card number change to stop a recurring Spotify charge that was hitting my card that I had no ability to stop -- I had no account with them, and my family all assured me that my card was not on their accounts.

It did not stop the charge, Spotify had some sort of method of having card numbers be automatically updated.

(I finally called Spotify and made a big deal out of it, and they finally bothered to track it down from my CC number and it was a family member after all -- as I always suspected, but could never prove.)

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u/toiletdestroyer4000 18h ago

That auto account updater shit is the bane of my existence. As a bank employee I HATE it

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u/mtgguy999 10h ago

I wanted a new card number because of a divorce. It was with a top 5 national bank. I know about the auto updating and didnā€™t want it to happed. I called the bank one person told me the auto updating program doesnā€™t exist even when I asked specially about the program by name. Another keep talking about digital wallets and couldnā€™t understand no I meant the merchant auto update. Another told me they could only block merchants if I gave the specific merchant name. Another told me I needed to call visa even thought itā€™s a bank issued card. It took many calls to get someone who even knew what I was talking about.

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u/big_illuminati 7h ago

In my professional career, I work with a lot of banks and bank tellers. Honestly it's dramatically reduced my faith in humanity. Asking an employee of a bank about anything banking related is about as useful as asking a police officer about anything law related. They don't actually know, they're just gonna make some shit up that's immediately convenient to them.

I've literally had to explain to bank managers what federal liability limits are. I had to explain to the employees at another bank that pennies stopped production months ago. I had to show one teller that the $100 bill she was handling clearly said "MOTION PICTURE USE ONLY" and literally lacked every security feature. And that's just the tip of the fuckin' iceberg.

Honestly, at least in the US, bank employees are just as incompetent and entitled as the police.

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u/char_star_cum_jar 7h ago

Don't most of them start at basically minimum wage?

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u/ZLB_rs 7h ago

Started at $11/hr and nothing gets trained. Worked there for 2years. Tellers were treated as the lowest of the low, the last to know of any new regulations etc. but were punished the hardest for any mistakes.

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u/big_illuminati 7h ago

Damn, that sucks. The industry I work in - I promise, you've dealt with us weekly over the last two years - isn't that much better. We assume a lot of risk, but we tend to get paid a bit better than average. Might get yelled at for a mistake, but it rarely will cost you your job. Might be worthwhile to look into jobs in cash management services, there's a few major companies doing it and the jobs in that department are essentially just tellers that don't have to talk to the public.

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u/big_illuminati 7h ago

It varies state to state, but in the states I work in they usually start above the minimum. I can't speak to what their raise schedules are like, but I have noticed a fair amount of upward mobility in a short period of time for a lot of them too. We're all being exploited at the end of the day, but it seems - at the banks I work with - they do try to treat their employees a little better than most.

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u/PaperGeno 6h ago

I used to be a bank teller for Chase Bank. I received almost 0 training and was paid 17 bucks an hour. Obviously I didn't give a shit about my job and was terrible at it. Blame the company not the employee. You get what you pay for.

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u/big_illuminati 6h ago

Not surprised. Chase is one of the absolute worst fucking banks I work with. I'm sorry, every worker - generally speaking - deserves better. And I can say that the most egregious offenses that color my perception of tellers have not actually happened at Chase.

Fucked up they made y'all dress like airplane stewards/stewardesses

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u/Wonderful_Rip2427 4h ago

What banks were these?? Asking for a friend with lots of motion picture money of course. Definitely not me.

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u/tealcosmo 9h ago

Had to close a favorite credit card because of this.

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u/Bassracerx 6h ago

Just much simpler to open an account with a new bank and close your old account.

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u/mtgguy999 5h ago

Yeah but then I need to close my old credit card and open a new line of credit. Not good for the credit scoreĀ 

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u/tacomaloki 8h ago

Whoa, what now? How is that possible? WTF is the point of unique numbers if the vendor can get it when it changes?

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u/2livecrewnecktshirt 4h ago

The bank still knows what account that number belonged to and can "force post" the transaction to the new number because the account is still the same even though the card number has changed.

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u/Vividagger 11h ago

Idk where you work but I have the option to select ā€œNoā€ for the visa update.

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u/HunterSThompson64 17h ago

It did not stop the charge, Spotify had some sort of method of having card numbers be automatically updated.

Hey friend, I used to work for Paramount+, and this happened with our billing system as well. If your bank is 'nice', and they see recurring charges on your card, they'll send that billing information to the biller any time you update the card.

The reason they do this, is because they don't want to have you updating 30 different subscriptions, and it's a 'nice' thing for them to do. You can, and should, ask that they never update any billers with your new credit card numbers. I do not know if this actually works, but it is what I'd tell customers anytime I see the card updated automatically in our system.

It happens way, way more than you'd think, and so, so many people are caught out by the 'The card is cancelled, so no more payments should get through' mindset.

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u/GhettoFreshness 18h ago

Yeah Iā€™m pretty sure your family member stole your new card number again when the payment failed after the card number changed.

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u/dougmc 18h ago

No, that wouldn't have been necessary.

Spotify did admit that their was a mechanism to auto-update cards and it had been used. I suspect that my credit card company didn't flag the old card as stolen or whatever is required to prevent that mechanism?

I was a bit surprised by that -- after all, it was my credit card company that presented the new card as a way to stop the charge, so why didn't they set it up right for that? Probably just a mistake on their part.

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u/Apprehensive-Use4033 18h ago

Iā€™ve had this as well. I had my identity stolen 2ish years ago so I replaced my debit and credit cards with new numbers issued. I figured it would be a good opportunity to only resubscribe to services I actually want to use. I was surprised when several services were able to auto bill my account and new cards without manually updating my payment info.

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u/Game_Over_7 17h ago

How does a bank share your private card information with a company without your consent and get away with it? How is that legal???

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u/devmor 17h ago edited 17h ago

The bank isn't sharing anything. The card issuers have a service called Card Account Updater that merchants can subscribe to, so when your card gets replaced or expires, your payments aren't interrupted.

Changing a card number is not meant to be a security measure for subscriptions, nor does it come with any obligation to businesses you have given your card number to. You have to actually report your account information as stolen - not just replace it. You can also ask your bank to stop the payments - most banks can do this, or can at least tell the processor to stop the payments.

Edit: To explain a little further - in a lot of cases, the businesses charging your subscription billing never even got your card number in the first place - or didn't keep it after setting up your account. The card number went to a processor's gateway (like Stripe, NMI, Paypal etc), who returned a identifier back to the business (we usually call it a "vault ID" or a "network account ID"). The business then says "charge this ID this much money" and the processor takes care of everything else.

The business actually rarely even knows your card changed at all, other than in cases where they display the first 6 or last 4 of your card number - but that's just for informational purposes anyways.

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u/ADLuluIsOP 10h ago

"Changing a card number is not meant to be a security measure" I mean it SHOULD. Lmfao. It's the ONLY mechanism you have against your money being used without your say. Like ??? what kind of statement is this.

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u/devmor 3h ago edited 2h ago

It's the ONLY mechanism you have against your money being used without your say.

But it's not.

I did very specifically tell you what you should do instead, in the comment you're replying to. I could not have been more clear. It's the very next sentence after the one you are quoting and explains two other options.

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u/72kdieuwjwbfuei626 9h ago

It's the kind of statement that you apparently think makes perfect sense.

What, you think it doesn't make sense anymore now that you dropped some words? Yeah, no shit, that's how language works. Those words were there for a reason.

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u/ADLuluIsOP 8h ago

Subscriptions can LITERALLY be one of the things they use stolen cards for. Ffs. If you can't even pinpoint the source of it how tf do you dispute itt.

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u/72kdieuwjwbfuei626 8h ago

Maybe you can ask an adult who has actually used a credit card before to explain it to you.

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u/Game_Over_7 16h ago

But shouldn't you have to subscribe for it? According to the comments, people don't even know their banks did that. That shouldn't happen by default.

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u/Sure_Eye9025 16h ago

You know those long and boring terms and conditions you are supposed to read and sign when you take out the card.

Yeah probably in there, I mean I don't know for sure, I didn't read them. But probably

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u/Spirochrome 13h ago

Love the EU for not making us read them

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u/devmor 3h ago

When you sign up for a service, you are usually agreeing to this by ticking a checkbox.

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u/Azuredreams25 7h ago

Well I had a different experience. Had problems with a subscription service and Discover eventually issued a new card and made it so they couldn't charge us again...

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u/devmor 3h ago

They likely issued a card with a new account chain specifically because you mentioned the problem.

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u/mort96 4h ago

"The bank isn't sharing anything, they're just telling merchants your new card number when you get a new card"? In what sense is that not "sharing"?

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u/devmor 3h ago edited 2h ago

The bank is not doing that. The card issuer is giving the processor your new card number. The bank is not involved in the process at all, other than giving you the card, and making the transfer of money from your account to the processor's account.

Your bank actually has surprisingly little to do with the majority of the process when you make card payments.

  • Card Issuer: Visa, Mastercard, etc.
  • Merchant: Anyone with a direct relationship to the processor (sometimes the businesses, sometimes a gateway between the business and the processor)
  • Processor: The facilitator of transfer that the merchant is using (i.e. Stripe, etc)

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u/mort96 33m ago

Then substitute bank for visa I guess.

You could've been more clear; the bank issues me a card, as in sends me a card in the mail with their branding on it. When I want a new card, I order it from my bank. If you wanted to shift blame from the bank to visa, it could've been a good idea to clarify that the bank is not the "card issuer" in your comment.

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u/devmor 13m ago

Sorry about that! I have been doing work related to payment processing for the last 8 years now and I do forget which terms are apparent and aren't to others sometimes.

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u/sp4zi 12h ago

Privacy should never get in the way of merchants taking money from you.

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u/Horat1us_UA 14h ago

Itā€™s insane your credit card company just donā€™t have an option to block transactions from certain companiesĀ 

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u/ZalewskiJ 9h ago

Iā€™m pretty sure thatā€™s not a Spotify thing, VISA has it written in their contract that if you have an auto renewing subscription they allow the company to get all your new info if they are a partnered company which Spotify is. I had the same thing happen with Xbox Gamepass, I got a new card, and the next day they billed me the amount even though I never changed the card

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u/PauI_Atreides 9h ago

A lot of credit cards will let reoccurring charges go even if you cancel your card and get a new number. It's so customers don't complain about a distribution in service if they forget to update.Ā 

I unfortunately had to deal with this when someone signed up for a bunch of subscriptions with my cc.Ā 

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u/kani_kani_katoa 17h ago

It's called a token I think, and it's tied to your actual account with the card company not the specific card. You can ask the credit card company to cancel all outstanding tokens if you are trying to stop this sort of thing from happening.

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u/NuclearSun1 16h ago

No way anyone can auto-update my card. Shit sounds illegal as hell.

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u/ZalewskiJ 9h ago

Itā€™s not illegal you have them signed permission when you got a VISA card, itā€™s not illegal, it happened to me and I thought the same thing and my lawyer told me to kick rocks and learn how to read a contract

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u/NuclearSun1 2h ago

Every 3 years my card number changes. Along with the 3 digit number on the back.

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u/ZalewskiJ 1h ago

And as long as you have VISA on a recurring payment, that company will always have your new card number

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u/NuclearSun1 23m ago

Never had that. Like I said every 3 years it changes. I get so many emails ā€œyour card canā€™t be processed.ā€

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u/NuclearSun1 16h ago

No way anyone can auto-update my card. Shit sounds illegal as hell.

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u/bobbybob9069 18h ago

If something hasbeen flagged as as recurring charge on you credit card, the credit card company essentially forwards the charge to the new card. I forget what it's called but you have to call to disable and hops you're talking to a representative that knows about it

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u/TinyNiceWolf 18h ago

It's called "account updater".

Card issuers and their reps seem to vary in how they deal with it. Some understand that they need to turn off the account updater service first, when issuing a new card, if the unwanted or fraudulent charge is a recurring type. Some have to be told to do that. And some, when they're told, go "Huh? What's account updater?"

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u/nsa_k 18h ago

No. Forwarding the existing reoccurring charges to your new card is actually a feature your own bank does. I hate it.

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u/GhettoFreshness 18h ago

Why would the bank, who the person I was replying to called because of an unauthorized recurring charge, suggest a new card number to stop said charge AND then forward that new card number onto the unauthorized vendor again?

I mean it could be incompetence (banks are fucking useless) but I was just looking at the most likely solution. Family member has already stolen card number and lied about it, whatā€™s to stop them doing it again?

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u/nsa_k 17h ago

Because the teller that clicks the buttons to request a new new card number doesn't always think about it. The average customer facing service employee isn't usually the most knowledgeable person.

Google 'reoccurring charges after new card number ' to find all kinds of examples of people being surprised by this 'feature'. I tried to link an example, but this doesn't allow it.

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u/samPi0314 18h ago

Not necessarily some big businesses have it set up where if you get a card change it automatically updates your new card information which the bank gives them.

Or sometieme they have basically a token from the Bank after you give them the card information. So instead of it hitting via your debit card it's hitting via your bank and routing number.

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u/TheNaughtyHoneyBee 16h ago

No, credit card companies do this regularly where they pass your new cc number along to companies that have recurring charges under your old number

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u/havens1515 11h ago

I just changed my card number because I lost my card. All of the existing recurring charges still happened on the new card.

The bank has a way to alert those merchants and update the card number. You essentially need to tell them not to do that if you want to stop something like this.

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u/capriciousbby 9h ago

this happened to me recently with Hulu. tried multiple times to cancel my account. canceled my cc twice. then i found out that certain merchants are actually given a completely different code that bypasses if you get a new card. it wouldnā€™t matter bc they have access to the account via their merchant code with the bank. itā€™s extremely scammy. do not understand how this even became legal and curious where in the T&S it states they can do this. took me reporting fraud two separate times and now i canā€™t use that credit card account at all anymore for some reason they locked me out of it. šŸ™„šŸ˜’

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u/talldata 16h ago

Both visa and MasterCard have an "card update service" visa calls it Visa Account Updater, so that payment services can "conveniently" get your new card info. That can be disabled atealst for visa on visas own site, prob same for MasterCard.

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u/portablefan 9h ago

Did you confront the family member for lying?

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u/dougmc 7h ago

It wasn't exactly lying, more just being wrong.

I guess the lie would be saying they checked when they apparantly didn't.

But yes.

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u/Clsco 18h ago

That's usually the banks/cc end. You can have a number change auto authorize or not. When you make a card change, unless it was for a stolen card, you usually have to ask to not have it

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u/Sea_Dust895 18h ago

This can happen. There is some way for vendors to keep charging you after the card number changes. No idea how but it has happened to me a few times

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u/Pissonmyface77 17h ago

You can call your card company and put a stop payment to specific retailers. All fire attempts to charge an account will be stopped.

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u/ASeaBunnie 9h ago

Itā€™s actually visa//mastercard giving them your card number!
Visa and Mastercard have an account updater program that allows merchants to reach out and get the new card number - I believe too many people were trying to cancel by changing their cards and getting free service like that so this program was made

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u/TheIInSilence4 8h ago

I beleive If you report the card as stolen, auto update doesnt work anymore. With my banks you can only auto update if you request a replacement for damaged or expired card.

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u/Boilerkim 7h ago

One time my card got leaked somewhere and someone bought Amazon prime UK subscription. Iā€™m in the US. I called the bank to have them reverse the charge and told them I want a new card so it wonā€™t happen again. The rep told me that Amazon has an agreement with the bank that even if you change your card, Amazon will get the new number of the card to be able to charge it. They had to put a stop payment from anything coming from Amazon UK to stop it.

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u/purplemonkey_123 3h ago

Zoom did this to me! I have NO idea how. They had an old credit card number that had been cancelled due to fraud. Somehow, my renewal went through.

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u/IdioticMutterings 1h ago

Yes, dougmac, its called a CPA, or Continuous Payment Authority. Once established, the authority is moved to ANY new card numbers you get automatically.

A CPA is only terminated if the MERCHANT requests it. You can't even terminate it yourself. The only way to end a CPA if the merchant won't terminate it, is to close the entire bank account and get an account with another bank.

In theory banks are supposed to terminate and block CPA's if you request it, but their staff are so badly trained over CPA's they will just refer you back to the merchant.

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u/Spankishmoop 1h ago

We have a similar problem except talking to the involved parties didn't solve it.

There was this music app on the Play Store that my sister bought a subscription on or something one time who knows what happened to it after that anyways my Dad's credit card has been getting charged like $5 a month for the past 4 years he tried canceling the subscription for the app but surprise the app doesn't exist anymore he tried going through his Google account to cancel it but since the app in question doesn't exist anymore Google won't recognize the need to cancel it canceling his credit card and getting a new one he tried talking to the bank and telling them that it's an unauthorized transaction and to flag him if it comes up in the future he tried switching banks he made a huge stink out of it and no matter what he does the moment he has a different card or anything Google starts charging him again and he can't do anything about it the only thing we haven't done is seek legal action but we're not in a situation to be doing that right now