Stopping Automatic Payments
What should you do if you keep getting auto-billed for a thing you don’t want? From political donations to monthly subscriptions, everyone wants your money. But what happens when you change your mind?
Your BBB® receives many inquiries from people having problems stopping recurring billing.
Any recurring pledge, payment, or subscription you make will have some terms and conditions on when and how you can cancel, and what kind of refund, if any, you can expect.
You would expect that when you cancel, they properly stop billing you going forward. This is not always true. You do have rights to make the payments stop, and if you can’t, there’s help.
The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act of 2010 (ROSCA) protects consumers from shady marketing and sales tactics specifically on the internet. The term for that is called “negative-option marketing.” A company doing it on the internet must “clearly and conspicuously” disclose all the terms before getting your billing info, get your explicit, informed consent before charging you at all, and provide “simple mechanisms” for you to stop the recurring charge. Regulation E governs electronic transfers, limiting your liability when a transfer isn’t authorized. That means, if you haven’t said it’s okay, or you say to stop, and someone keeps doing it anyway, you have recourse. What do you do if you don’t want to be signed up for a recurring membership, subscription, or donation anymore?
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