MSN, CCBill and ambush billing for online services
Apparently this is the week when every irritating, pointless and time-consuming thing lands on me. My debit card got declined at the grocery store, so tonight I went through the checking account and found that MSN had taken $79.95 out of it on March 8th for no reason I could see.
I had not paid MSN for anything since 2001. The card on their records had expired; it was replaced after somebody stole the original number and used it on adult websites. I deliberately keep only a small cushion in that account, enough for a quick grocery run or minor purchases, so this charge left me $3.00 in the red and triggered a hefty overdraft fee.
Once I dug into it, two things puzzled me. How could a charge go through on an expired card whose number does not even match the card we use today? And why on earth was I being billed for something I had neither used nor subscribed to in all the years since 2001?
Lesson #1: When your personal and banking details have not changed since you signed up, the company can push the charge through and the bank will pay it. So it is essential, and I cannot stress this enough, to cancel each and every service and obtain a confirmation number proving the cancellation; without one, the bank will not reverse the charge. I mention the bank specifically because it (Bank of America, at least) will undo the charge immediately once you can show, with that number, that you canceled.
The second question had this answer: Verizon, my internet provider, switched its online portal over to Yahoo! (which I already knew), so keeping MSN access meant paying for it. The flaw in that reasoning is that MSN never told me and never offered me a chance to close the account before billing me. Had the balance in that account not been so low, I probably would not have noticed until the month was over.
Lesson #2: Keep a record of every online subscription and when it renews. If a service is no longer useful or wanted, cancel it well ahead of the renewal date.
Things got off to a bad start when I phoned MSN. A message for MSN: I beg you, add a way to exit your voice menu, because here is how the call opened.
First, the automated voice system announced that my card on file had expired and asked if I would like to update the expiration date or provide another card. I answered "No." It simply repeated the same question, this time adding that I could say "Help." So I said "Help!" The system then explained that, since the card had expired, I was required to either update the date or supply a different card, and it asked me to choose "change date" or "new card." I told it "Neither one!" Back came the identical question about the expired card, with the same offer of help.
(Is your blood pressure rising yet?) We went around like this twice more before my patience finally ran out, and I shouted "Operator, customer service, representative now!!!" The system replied that it believed I wanted a customer service representative and told me to say "Yes" for one or "Main Menu" for other choices. I said "Yes!"
Talking to the agent was almost as absurd. Right away she said the charge would stand, comparing it to a cable package: I might not be using the service, but it was available to me, so I owed the money.
I told her once more that I was closing the account and that the most I could fairly owe was 5 days of access, meaning 5/365 x $79.95, and certainly not the full $79.95. It only sank in after I spelled it out plainly. I put it to her this way: a charge for the year starting 3/7 pays for the twelve months up to 3/7. If I cancel today, is it reasonable to bill me for the remaining 11 months and 26 days, which I will never use?
"Oh," she replied, and said she would take it to her supervisor once more because she now understood my point.
When she returned, she refunded the whole amount, apologized and issued a confirmation number for the credit. She added that I would have a 90-day grace period if I had second thoughts.
Microsoft, there will be no second thoughts. I am only pointing out the obvious. Why should I spend 80 bucks every year on services I never touch? And why do I never touch them? Because Google, Flickr and other sites give me better, quicker and more efficient options at no cost. Hello!!!
CCBill is worse still
Next, CCBill, in my view the most wicked online billing company in existence. If you have not run into it, CCBill collects payments for a wide range of web services, and most of what it bills is for adult sites. As I have written elsewhere, I was cleaning up a mess with adult sites that Stick had created himself. On February 1st I found out that several adult sites were debiting his card through CCBill. I did exactly what their cancellation instructions said: I clicked the link, looked up every subscription CCBill was billing, using the email address together with the credit card number, found three, and canceled all of them.
I then phoned Wells Fargo Bank and asked them to block any future charges from CCBill. They told me the block was in place.
Even so, on March 2nd two more charges for $55.00 came through from sites I had canceled the previous month. Our trip to Maui began the following day, so I blew up on the phone with Wells Fargo, and they brought in the smart aleck who runs customer service for CCBill (the same guy I had dealt with both times). The three of us ended up in an actual shouting match.
Among other complaints, this rude representative claimed I was wrong to believe everything had been canceled, since I had simply followed the emailed instructions and handled it through the websites, while also notifying them that a minor had made these charges, which made them illegal. In a patronizing and thoroughly grating voice, he told me that calling him was the one and only way to be sure every account was closed, since he could run a search unavailable to me in which the card number would reveal every account CCBill was billing.
Their website says nothing of the kind. According to the site, searching with two of the three terms will bring up your accounts so that you can cancel them. On top of that, I had phoned CCBill a week earlier about the very same problem, and they promised me that every account had been found and canceled. Yet he claimed not to recall that call and never sent an email confirming it, which conveniently let another $100 in charges slip through. My cell phone bill, though, shows that call along with its date and the precise time I placed it.
So on the day before we left town for a week, I lost 2 hours dealing with this guy, and in the end we had to shut down Stick's account this week and open a fresh one, just to be certain nothing more could be charged.
Want to hear the worst part? Even after I told them that a minor had made these subscription charges, the websites involved kept granting access for the month already billed, rather than refunding the money at once and cutting off access completely.
I am not defending Stick here. What he did was foolish. He is also 17, and 17-year-olds do foolish things; he is no different. In my eyes, the first $125 hit to his account, which happened before I found out, was punishment enough for that. What makes me angry is that once I stepped in, carefully followed the site's instructions and believed every account was canceled, they still kept pulling charges (outrageously large ones, too) from an account I had asked the bank to block.
Simply put, this is greed. (Obviously.) But it goes beyond greed. It is the enormous lengths they go to in order to hold on to your money even after you have told them you do not want their service.
Picture this: you eat at a restaurant and put a nice dinner, a bottle of wine and dessert on your card. Seven days later the exact same charge shows up, because the restaurant decided that since you liked last week's meal, you must want another this week. And if you did not actually eat it, well, you ought to have, and you were able to, so they feel entitled to bill you anyway.
That is precisely what is happening here. MSN knew right away that I had not logged in to MSN for more than three years, because they already had a ready-made argument for why I owed them for a service I was not using. Instead of thinking it over, they began from the assumption that the customer, meaning me, owed them money for FUTURE service that I had not used in the past!
CCBill put even less thought into it. As they saw it, it made no difference whether the charges were fraudulent; they were only the collector and would keep collecting for their client. On top of that, they would make it as hard as possible for customers to find the proper way to shut the service off, guaranteeing that they would collect at least double, and perhaps triple, the amount owed before the customer finally gave up and closed the bank account.
One more thing: my debit card got shut off after hackers used it and ran charges through none other than, you guessed it, CCBill.
Billing for online services by ambush. We should refuse to put up with it. Would you ever return to the restaurant in my example? Tell me YOUR horror stories.
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