FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

My workaround to this has been to email the company telling them I want to cancel. Once I either don't get a reply, or get a reply saying "just call us and we'll cancel!", I dispute the next charge with American Express and have the email record of trying to cancel. I believe they also offer a "stop allowing charges by this merchant" feature that cuts off future charges.

> I believe they also offer a "stop allowing charges by this merchant" feature

If they have this it's another reason to use them for automatic billing. I have tried to do this with a VISA card and they said they cannot do it; the only way to prevent future charges would be to close that account entirely and even then I might still get billed for some period of time.

This is good to know. I had Dropbox billing through PayPal and could never cancel charges in anyway through the Dropbox site. Realized I had to disassociate PayPal and the recurring charge said “payment failed”. Finally effectively canceled.

American Express is a very special card that typically comes with annual fee that is very much worth it. I would never book any hotels, buy plane tickets or signup in any form of membership with any other card because I got burnt way too many times with Visa and MC is even worse. Also that's why businesses typically do not like AE because how easy it is to dispute the charge.

But to add - I discourage you from using chargeback as a feature to stop future charges. Most banks will report it to your credit bureau - you won't see it in form of points being withheld BUT it might be adverse for you when you try to get a loan, etc. My mother disputed way too many things (memory troubles at her age) and they did not renew her CC after expiration date and MasterCard told her she is not eligible for card with her excessive CB ratio.

AmEx is great for this. I've used it twice, no issues that I can tell. I had my personal card attached to a BrowserStack account that used a work email address. Forgot to cancel it when I left the job and BrowserStack support was completely useless. One chat session with AmEx later and I receive no more charges from BrowserStack.

Of course I have to remember that they are blocked on that card, should I ever need an account again in the future.

I use one of those banks that allows me to generate sub-accounts easily, each of which has an account number for e-checks and Debit card number. So I can use that for subscriptions, either fund it once, or fund it regularly via automated transfers from my main balance, or you can set it up to just automatically pull from your main account. Then when you're done with it, you can close that sub-account. It's worked very well for these sorts of subscriptions.

Specifically, I'm using Qube, but at this point I'm looking to move away from them and do not at all recommend them.

Check out Privacy.com for card generation. You can set monthly/yearly/all-limits, pause and cancel cards, create single-use cards, etc. And their virtual cards accept any billing information. As a result I don’t bother unsubscribing directly anymore and instead just pause the card. Less hassle. More control.

I’m also using Qube and looking to get away but I really like having the sub-accounts. What have you found? Envelope seems to have really nice features but lacks the sub-accounts.

> Most banks will report it to your credit bureau - you won't see it in form of points being withheld BUT it might be adverse for you when you try to get a loan, etc

I never knew this! I have heard about companies banning you if you request a CB, which would be really bad for things like Google, Uber, etc.

I usually end up having to dispute a charge only once a year or so. It has surprised me over the past few years how lacking AMEX seems to be in its "investigation". It at least used to take a few days and they'd sometimes ask for documentation. The last one I did got turned around in maybe an hour.

The best workaround (imho) is just using virtual cards. My Venture X allows me to create a virtual card on the spot restricted to that merchant where I can also enter an optional lock date. If I want to try something, I just create a new card and set the lock date to the next day. Even if I forget to cancel, good luck charging my card :)

Privacy.com has been increasing neutering their free tier and you cant fund with a credit card, their cards have reputation problems at merchants. They're one if the problems imho if we're talking about what's being sold if different than what's being bought.

> I believe they also offer a "stop allowing charges by this merchant" feature that cuts off future charges.

Yes, but you have to call or chat them. It's quick, but I'd _much_ prefer a way in app / website to block a merchant.

Although in practice I don't think it will be an issue, in theory issuing a chargeback on your credit card does not release you from any financial obligations you agreed to with a contract. And if that contract specifies that you must "call to cancel" I don't think "I emailed" will hold up in court (but IANAL). Of course with this FCC ruling that could very well not be the case, but in any case always be wary of issuing a chargeback and thinking the matter settled if you did actually have legitimate commerce with the business in question.

Speaking to owners of server hosts, I think this is pretty common; PP ghost subscriptions continue after the mervhant removes it.

It happened to me once after I deleted a subscription for a server on my dashboard, yet was still being billed.

Ah, that's why many businesses stopped accepting virtual cards now for online payments ...

That requires your debt to:

a) be worth fighting for in court; and,

b) be of a nature the news won’t murder the company over the lawsuit.

They don't have to go to court, they'll just send you to collections and report it on your credit.

The best part is the chargeback costs the vendor something like $15

I've had to do this a few times for various reasons and got cancellation confirmations from the companies after the chargeback happened.

Obviously, this would be much different putting a $1,000+ business SaaS subscription on a credit card vs. a $10/month consumer product.