CREDIT CARD FRAUD

[fastpedaller]

Only grief from my perspective was card being stopped and new card issued and having to change all the recurring payments that were setup on the card.

One thing I've learned over the years is don't agree to a regular payment by credit card because they don't have the same protection as direct debits. Unless something has changed, the only way to stop a regular payment on a credit card is through the payee, I only discovered this through the imo scurrilous practices of MacAfee(sp?) the antivirus gang. I bought a computer with it installed as a freebie and didn't realise I had been snared by "always on" which means they keep dipping you for the fee on the pretext that it "protects" you from your own forgetfulness if you don't renew. It took me a long time to get out of this and even if I'd cancelled the card, the card company would have continued to charge me. That was in the days when the West Yorkshire consumer protection people had a helpline and a very helpful advisor told me that as the original transaction was billed in the US, it would be governed by US rules on which she could not advise.

NB I'm not talking about disputed credit card transactions. I've not had many but the card company has always sorted things out in my favour. (Admittedly with bad blood when it was the Co-op Bank, but that's another story.)

I also had the same problem with McAfee, and was unable to stop the auto-renewal. I sent them an email 6 weeks before the renewal date
saying I wished to cancel, and 4 weeks before the renewal date I received an email saying "so you know you are protected we will renew your membership and take payment tomorrow!" In my frantic attempts to sort this, I eventually found a McAfee 'office' phone number, but before I phoned them the next day I received a "satisfaction survey" purporting to be from a 3rd party who collect data for mcAfee - I suspect it was McAfee themselves. Anyway, I let rip, related what had happened and said if McAfee didn't cancel the agreement and give me a refund I'd be contacting UK fraud dept and UK national media. I quickly received a refund (although due to exchange rate fluctuation I received £3 less, but ignored it). Why did I cancel McAfee? well, we got a bug that McAfee didn't find, but a free virus checker did.
I don't buy a virus checker now (as win 10 defender included), but after McAfee I just used free ones which seemed to work fine.