Re: Credit Card Fraud

instructing the

Nope.

Every few months someone perpetrates this canard on Usenet. No-one has yet given any better authority for its accuracy than "the Acme Credit Card issuer said so".

If you communicate to your credit card company ("CCC") that you are withdrawing your authority to make a payment, and if the CCC make the payment anyway, they can whistle for the money.

Anyone who thinks this ain't so, please quote a court or FOS/OCI (the other crowd - not Pat Hickey & Co) decision.

(uk.finance & ie.general) added

You can't withdraw your authority. If you sign a credit slip in a shop you are bound by it, you can't change your mind, and a continuous authority is no different; they aren't registered with the card company like a DD so from their POV there is nothing to cancel, they are just like an open-ended set of discrete charges. However, continuous or not if the charge is in error for some reason then you can ask for it to be reversed, and the card companies normally do that quite happily because they just charge it back to the originator and leave them to fight it out with you. OTOH the hassle of having to chase something like that repeatedly is such that it's generally better not to use continuous authorities in the first place. Having said that, direct debits aren't bullet proof either, it once took me three letters to get my bank to cancel a DD (but it's easier now you can cancel them online).

In message , Rhoy the Bhoy writes

But you MUST still tell the creditor, you can not rely merely on telling the CCo.

Why not ? The credit card co. pays only on your authority. A withdrawn authority no longer exists.

Withdrawing the authority does not cancel the debt to the merchant, but that is a separate issue.

In message , Rhoy the Bhoy writes

You cant 'withdraw' the authority by contacting the CCo, only by contacting the creditor.

Quite.

withdrawn

Sez who ? (besides yourself).

In message , Rhoy the Bhoy writes

Every card co.

Without a hint of irony, "Rhoy the Bhoy" astounded uk.finance on 13 Apr 2004 by announcing:

Unlike DDs, there is no record held by he CC company and so nothing you can cancel with them. The best you could do would be to call them after the payment has been made. Unless you've actually cancelled the authority with the merchant, however, they're unlikely to do anything about it.

Do credit card companies accept continuous authorities for ever?

Freeserve used to debit charges monthly to a Nationwide Visa debit card. When the card expiry date that I gave to Freeserve was reached, Nationwide refused further attempts by Freeserve to debit the card.

Who gave them the right to decide the issue ?

authority with

If they ignore you, you have no liability to re-imburse them for payments made without authority.

The customers, by agreeing to the card co's terms & conditions.

The point is, the card co do not have a record of the continuous authority, only the merchant has. The card company always just trusts the merchant when they say they are requesting an authorised payment.

So, there are only two ways to stop the merchant requesting further payments. One is to stop using the merchant's services, the other is to agree with the merchant to pay for the services by some other means. Either way it's the *merchant* who must be told to stop putting in payment requests.

The card companies apparently don't have the capability to blacklist merchants on a per-account basis, so even if you did tell your CCo that you had withdrawn a merchant's authority, there'd be no action they could take, except to reverse a wrongly made payment after the fact.

Without a hint of irony, Bruce Robson astounded uk.finance on 14 Apr 2004 by announcing:

As long as it's a valid account, yes. The point being that even if you 'close' an account, it may still be valid.

Without a hint of irony, "Rhoy the Bhoy" astounded uk.finance on 14 Apr 2004 by announcing:

You do, because the authority *was* given. You gave it to the merchant. you have to withdraw it from the merchant.

What I hate about continuous credit authorities is that you can easily enter into them without fully realising. You buy some service by CC over the phone and the operative mentions "in passing" that it is an authority, not a single payment. Or you buy a service online, and the nature of the payment is buried in the T&C somewhere.

Another thing is that to cancel them you have to contact *the supplier*, who has a vested interest in continuing the payment, and you might have to deal with an inefficient customer service line with queues and high charges.

In comparison, a direct debit or standing order authority is an actual piece of paper you sign which looks completely different from a cheque, and to cancel it you contact your own bank, which presumably is reasonably easy (or you would change bank).

I doubt it. It would fall foul of the UCT regs, even if it is there.

IME, the CC never collects from its customer if the customer tells it that it has made an unauthorised payment.

Of course, they'll try your line on, but it's a bluff.

And if the merchant ignores you ?

Which would be better than never reversing it at all.

Bhoy

nothing

merchant. you

I gave it to both. It is being suggested that if the merchant ignores my withdrawal, that the CC can as well.

Which is rubbish.

Nope. There's nothing unfair about it. The very essence of the way credit cards work is that there is a two-way trust relationship both between merchants and the CCo and between you and the CCo. You buy something from a merchant and you tell him "put it on my card". They say "OK". They charge the money to the CCo and the CCo give them the money becuase they believe theme that you told them to. Makes no difference whether it's continuous or one-off.

Indeed. So where's the problem?

Then you ask the CCo to reverse the payment, and you remind the merchant to desist. If he carries on regardless, you report them to the CCo who will withdraw their merchant status. You could also report them to the police for fraud.

What do you mean "would be"? That's what actually happens.

No, that is not being suggested. And yes, it would be rubbish.

What is being suggested is that until you tell the merchant that you are withdrawing his authority to charge payments to your card, then the merchant remains entitled to take payments. Assuming, of course, the merchant is entitled to be paid.

There may at times be a further complicating factor arising from a contract between you and the merchant, if, for example, it is part of the agreement that CC CA is the only acceptable method of payment. In such cases you may simply not be entitled to withdraw your authority, unless you cancel the contract (if you're allowed to) or unless you are substituting a different card.