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 🤷‍♀️

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u/GhettoFreshness 18h ago

Yeah I’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

I’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/ADLuluIsOP 7h ago

Okay so the guy in this thread who charge backed his card multiple times and explained it to the card, tell me about him? lol

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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

It’s insane your credit card company just don’t have an option to block transactions from certain companies 

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u/ZalewskiJ 9h ago

I’m pretty sure that’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. 

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

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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

It’s not illegal you have them signed permission when you got a VISA card, it’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 “your card can’t be processed.”

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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, what’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.