An annoying part of life is the collection of recurring credit card charges over time. Things like gym memberships, or the kind of stuff companies like Intelius trick people into accidentally buying.
You can’t get these charges to stop. You talk to the companies. You threaten the companies. They drag their feet and never close the account.
But hey, there’s always the wipe out option. You call your credit card and ask for a new card. No one can make charges to the old number any more. I did this a couple of months ago to clear out about $400 per month in recurring charges that had accumulated over many years (this was my main TechCrunch credit card, so there was lots of random stuff).
That wipe out option was one of life’s small pleasures. A way to stick it to those companies that just won’t stop charging your credit card.
Apparently that’s all over now, and has been for some time due to changes in government regulations. Merchants can push charges through on the new card. There’s nothing you can do about it, and I have three merchants charging me a total of $113.95 that won’t go away.
Chase, the bank behind this credit card, says they have no choice but to keep charging me. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But it’s awful for the customer. And in this case it resulted in a lost customer.
Today I cancelled that credit card. My only other option was to go through the lengthy paperwork process of disputing all of these charges, and there’s no way I was going to do that.
Uncrunched 