Help! I've cancelled their service, but this company continues to bill my credit card an annual fee. What can I do?
I'm not a lawyer, and am certainly not familiar with your jurisdiction, but the general guidelines I've seen around this kind of situation are: If all else fails, you could just cancel the card, though I'm not sure what liability you have to honour the contract. I cancelled a card once to stop being charged by a particularly annoying company and had no problems, but I'm not sure if that is a good way to deal with it in general. Short of canceling the card, you could just report the card as lost and ask for a new card number on the same account. Another option is to just make a note to look for the charge and keep disputing it. It has been a while since I did credit card processing at my business, but I think the company gets dinged if too many customers dispute charges and kicks them into a higher fee schedule with the credit card company. I don't think you should have to cancel your card.  Call your customer service line and just indicate to them what has happened.  You aren't getting service for what they are charging you and they are refusing to remove it themselves.
I have an American Airlines VISA with miles that has no annual fee, but only because I request that they waive the fee each year. Word to the wise - they've never refused. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre27.pdf if you are in the US Look at section 805 and 805 about how they may contact you and what they are and aren't allowed to do. You can simply send a Certified Mail, Return Receipt (CMRR) letter explaining you have no part of it, and that they are not allowed to contact you by any means other than in writing from this point forward. Then you can either put return to sender on the letters (it costs them money) or open them and delete anything you don't need. You can't make your bank do a charge back. This function is to assist with straight up fraud, not a customer service mistake. (Think spoofed or stolen card or if a vendor intentionally acted fraudulently.) While you may believe what they did is fraud, your bank will require that you provide the vendor with the opportunity to rectify the situation themselves. Trying to call back and giving up after a long hold time won't meet their standards. If banks started letting anyone unhappy with a vendor start doing charge backs, they would be doing nothing else all day. The issues you're describing has not reached the threshold for the bank to authorize a charge back.  Comcast has local and regional offices, and you could go in person to speak with someone. Maybe there isn't one near you. There are non-peak hours which wait times will be less. You'll just have to grin and bear it if you truly want the money back. Then, take your business elsewhere and post bad reviews online. Always keep in mind that when you eventually speak with someone, they will not be the person that messed up, and you should be overly nice and polite to them. I promise it will yield far better results than being surly and demanding. Another way to get Comcast's attention would be to file a complaint with the BBB. It might take longer, but I've had this work with big companies, usually with good results. Again, be nice to whomever contacts you. In reference to your recent duplicate question: Mastercard won't be able to help at all. They play no part in the transaction at all. "My gym has a habit of randomly increasing our monthly payment with a $20 ""Special Fee"" a couple times a year.   This charge was not initiated until after I signed up, and signed authorization for a set monthly fee. The agreement I signed included no wording of this fee, so I have not given them permission to charge me this fee. I also have received no type of notification of this fee prior to it being charged to my credit card on file.   This seems very illegal to me. Am I right? What course of action might I have to get this stopped?" "From what I understand, they basically hold on to your money while you stop paying your debt.  They keep it in an account and negotiate on your behalf. The longer you go without paying, the less the debt collector is willing to take and at some point, they will settle.  So they take the money you've been putting into their ""account"" and pay it down.  Repeat the process for all your accounts. I basically did this, without using a service. I had $17,000 on one card and they bumped the interest rate to 29%, and I had lost my job. I didn't pay it for 7 months.  I just planned on filing bankruptcy.  They finally called me up and said, if you can pay $250 a month, until it's paid off, we will drop the interest to 0% and forgive all your late fees. I did that, and five years later it was paid off. Similar situation happened on my other cards.  It seems once they realize you can't pay, is when they're willing to give you a break.  It'd be nice they just never jacked up your rate to 30% though. So, forget the service, just do it yourself.  Call them up and ask, and if they don't budge, don't pay it. Of course your credit will be shot.  But I'm back in the 700s, so anything is possible over time." I am sorry for your troubles.  Presumably, you are feeling better which is the best possible outcome.  You project that you are an honest person and desire to seek a fair outcome although you were mistreated.  The insurance company should have paid a good portion of this bill. Because of this situation you will learn a valuable lesson.  Namely that collectors are scum.  They lie and manipulate to do their job.  They are trying to generate an emotional reaction out of you so you give in an put this bill on a credit card.  Do not fear them. My advice would be to ignore them.  You can educate yourself on collections law in your state.  They cannot call you at work and they probably cannot call you on a cell phone.  They will threaten to garnish your wages, tax return, and take away your birthday.  Just don't talk to them. When you can save up some money.  Once you have like $1200 attempt to settle in full for that amount.  Get it in writing ahead of time and do not give them access to your checking account.  Use a cashiers check or prepaid visa (that you then throw away).  If they say no, do not argue, hang up and call back when you have 1300.  Rinse, wash, repeat.   There is a decent chance that they have already violated some form of collections law.  If you have proof you can call the company's legal department and provide that proof.  You can then settle on having your collections waived.  In summary: This also presumes you have a lowish household income.  If you make like 70K, jut pay the bill.  I doubt that is the case though. "Typically, the CC company itself won't follow the customer very far upon a default (though it certainly can act as its own debt collector, or hire an agency for a fee to do the collection).  What most often happens: Once they do that, assuming they win the lawsuit, they can do the following: They cannot ""force"" you into bankruptcy, but they might make it so you have no better options (if bankruptcy is less painful than the above, which it often is).  They certainly can (and will) report to the credit bureaus, of course.  For more information, Nolo has a decent help site on this subject. Different jurisdictions have slightly different rules, so look up yours.  Here is an example (this is from Massachusetts). Not every debt is sued for, of course; particularly, pay attention to the statute of limitations in your state.  (In mine, it's seven years, for example.)  And it's probably worth contacting someone locally (a legitimate non-profit debt relief agency, or your state's help agency if they have one) to find local rules and regulations." JC Penny keeps sending credit card to my address, without some other dudes name on it.  I call them to tell them the dude dont live here.  Then they bitch me out, like I'm a criminal.  And tell me to cut up the card.  Then about a month later they send another card.  Dumbassess. If you have any automated, recurring payments attached to the credit card, having the number cancelled can result in major losses - for instance, domain name expiration, VPS deletion, deactivation of mobile or VoIP phone service, etc. Good providers will give you a warning and plenty of time to replace the payment method on record, but I wouldn't necessarily trust them all to handle it well. Someone else might be able to provide more details - but generally yes, of course.  International corporations can pursue debt collection across borders - whether or not they do is a matter of convenience rather than law.  My understanding is that a company's ability to report on your credit report is dependent on their membership in Equifax, USA etc. - so while most of your credit is country by country, international companies or companies with any relationship in other countries can follow you cross-border if they find out your new address and report the debt w/ that address.  Since virtually every major company has some American affiliate, I wouldn't hold my breath that you can escape it indefinitely ESPECIALLY since you don't already have the debt, and have the power to actually pay for the service that you're using.  Also - this is an incredibly scummy thing to do, and no matter how you dress it up as a financial decision it's just theft. Would you leave the country without paying your landlord? Without paying for groceries or other physical goods? Why is stealing from a telecom company any different? You need to find out if the credit card has been reporting these failed automated payments as late or missed payments to your credit report. To do this, go to annualcreditreport.com (the official site to get your free credit reports) and request your report from all three bureaus. If you see late or missing payments reported for the months where you made a payment but then they did an automatic payment anyway, you should call up the credit card company, explain the situation, and ask them to retract those negative reports. If they refuse, you should dispute the reports directly with the credit bureaus. If they have been reporting late payments even though you have been making the payments, that will impact your credit much more than the fact that they closed your account.  Unfortunately, they can turn off your credit account for any reason they like, and there isn't much you can do about that. Find yourself another job as soon as you can, get back on your feet, pay off your debt, and think very carefully before you open another credit card in the future. Don't start a new credit card unless you can ensure that you will pay it off in full every month. "A bona-fide company never needs your credit card details, certainly not your 3-digit-on-back-of-card #, to issue a refund.  On an older charge, they might have to work with their merchant provider.  But they should be able to do it within the credit card handling system, and in fact are required to.  Asking for details via email doesn't pass the ""sniff test"" either.  To get a credit card merchant account, a company needs to go through a security assessment process called PCI-DSS. Security gets drummed into you pretty good.  Of course they could be using one of the dumbed-down services like Square, but those services make refunds ridiculously easy.   How did you come to be corresponding on this email address?  Did they initially contact you?  Did you find it on a third party website?  Some of those are fraudulent and many others, like Yelp, it's very easy to insert false contact information for a business. Consumer forums, even moreso.  You might take another swing at finding a proper contact for the company.  Stop asking for a cheque.  That also circumvents the credit card system.  And obviously a scammer won't send a check... at least not one you'd want!  If all else fails: call your bank and tell them you want to do a chargeback on that transaction.  This is where the bank intervenes to reverse the charge.  It's rather straightforward (especially if the merchant has agreed in principle to a refund) but requires some paperwork or e-paperwork.   Don't chargeback lightly.  Don't use it casually or out of laziness or unwillingness to speak with the merchant, e.g. to cancel an order.  The bank charges the merchant a $20 or larger investigation fee, separate from the refund.  Each chargeback is also a ""strike""; too many ""strikes"" and the merchant is barred from taking credit cards. It's serious business.   As a merchant, I would never send a cheque to an angry customer.  Because if I did, they'd cash the cheque and still do a chargeback, so then I'd be out the money twice, plus the investigation fee to boot." If they had told me that I owe them $10,000 from 3 years ago, I   wouldn't have anything to fight back. Why? First thing you have to do is ask for a proof. Have you received treatment? Have you signed the bill when you were done? This should include all the information about what you got and how much you agreed to pay. Do they have that to show to you, with your signature on it? If they don't - you owe nothing. If they do - you can match your bank/credit card/insurance records (those are kept for 7 years at least) and see what has been paid already. Can a doctor's office do that? They can do whatever they want. The right question is whether a doctor's office is allowed to do that. Check your local laws, States regulate the medical profession. Is there a statute of limitation (I'm just guessing) that forces them   to notify me in a certain time frame? Statute of limitations limits their ability to sue you successfully. They can always sue you, but if the statute of limitations has passed, the court will throw the suite away (provided you bring this defense up on time of course). Without a judgement they cannot force you to pay them, they can only ask. Nicely, as the law quoted by MrChrister mandates. They can trash your credit report and send the bill to collections though, but if the statute of limitations has passed I doubt they'd do that. Especially if its their fault. I'm not a lawyer, and you should consult with a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction for definitive answers and legal advice. As noted above, this is likely going to need (several) lawyers to straighten out.  I am not a lawyer, but I think one should be retained ASAP. However, in the meantime: The authorized user should not be making any charges.  Continuing to do so at this point may be a criminal offense.  For the protection of any other heirs, this should be brought to the attention of the credit card issuer and law enforcement authorities.  As it stands, the account holder's estate will be liable for the full debt, and the authorized user's estate would be untouched.   Of course, all this could change if other heirs challenge the estate and file civil suits, in which case it's likely that both estates will be eaten up with legal fees anyway. I did just what you suggest. The card company honored the charge, they told me the temporary number was solely for the purpose of assigning a number to one vendor/business. So even though I set a low limit, the number was still active and the card company paid the request. Small price to pay, but it didn't go as I wished.    For this purpose, I've used Visa/Mastercard gift cards. They are often on sale for face value and no additional fees.