Natwest Credit Card Expiry - Beware!

CHokKA

CHokKA

CHokKA

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Hi everyone

I have just checked my credit card statement, and money paying for a service that I signed up for last year has been taken out again by way of auto-renewal of the service. Now, ordinarily, that wouldn't be much of an issue, except for the fact that they've charged it to the card on their file that expired since I signed up last year. Last year I used the service but decided a few weeks ago that I wouldn't sign up again. So I logged into my account management and tried to disable the auto-renewal, but I wasn't able to because their online system told me that the card on file had expired and that I'd need to update the expiration details in order to cancel the auto-renewal. Figuring that this was pointless given that their system was saying it had expired (which it did in February this year), I figured it wouldn't be possible for it to renew and left it alone. Yet, it has somehow managed to charge my account as today I see a charge for £129.99 on my credit card.

Now I've just spoken to Natwest, and the chap on the other end of the phone told me that for subscription based services, a credit card expiring makes absolutely no difference and they can charge it anyway. This makes absolutely no sense to me, as if I was to walk into a shop and try to pay for something with my expired card, they'd tell me to get stuffed. So how is this even possible, or even allowed? To me this is an unlawful transaction. What's the point in having an expiration date on a card?

I know now that I probably should have cancelled the auto-renewal, but how many people would go to the trouble of adding in their card expiration date, just so that they can cancel the service when the card expiring should prevent any further payments being taken? I would never have expected money to be charged to a credit card that has expired, and I'm sure many others wouldn't expect that either. Now I've got access to the service for another year and I still need to input my new expiration date just so that I can cancel the auto-renewal of the service. It seems completely pointless but now I know it is necessary because for some reason the banks allow such practice to occur.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post up as a warning to others here that would quite rightly believe that an expired card is just that, completely unusable, when in fact that isn't the case at all. Now I've got to try and get a refund from the company that charged me, or contact Trading Standards which will be interesting given that they're a US company. I very much doubt I'll see that money again.
 
It's called continuous card authority - generally speaking it's used for recurring services and enables you to have continuity of service when paying for services of that nature. What is/was the service and what was the company?
 
Well I had considered that, but I wasn't sure whether it'd apply in this situation given that I didn't actually purchase anything, it was a renewal for a service I'd already used. I thought Section 75 covered you if something went wrong with the purchase only. I will investigate :)
 
daz said:
It's called continuous card authority - generally speaking it's used for recurring services and enables you to have continuity of service when paying for services of that nature. What is/was the service and what was the company?
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It's a subscription to the NFL GamePass service. Basically it provides the ability to stream live NFL games to your PC / iPad / iPhone etc.
 
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Just had exactly this kind of situation with Microsoft billing. Basically my wife bought the Xbox Live Family Gold package when it was released using her debit card to prevent the children being able to purchase stuff through the dashboard as only the principal account holder was authorized to pay. Couple of years on and Microsoft pull the plug on Family Gold around the same time as her card expired.
Back end of June an email comes in stating that an attempt to take payment had failed and to update her card on the Microsoft billing site. Smelling a rat I check her statement and indeed they have taken £39.99 using her card over six months out of date to purchase a single Gold Membership, a service she has never requested.
Using online chat I was able to convince MS to refund her as the account they renewed had never been used online by her and was just set up to control any attempted online purchases. The fun started when six weeks later they had failed to repay her money because the card they were storing was expired, they had no trouble taking money off the card but apparently were unable to refund back to it :mad:
Eventually after lots of to-ing and fro-ing between MS and Lloyds I had to enable a new card (with a block on any outgoing transactions to MS placed on it by Lloyds) on the MS billing site just to get her refund authorized. Needless to say I removed that card from MS billing records immediately the refund came back.
 
CHokKA said:
Now I've just spoken to Natwest, and the chap on the other end of the phone told me that for subscription based services, a credit card expiring makes absolutely no difference and they can charge it anyway.
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sounds odd to me.

i had an experian subscription on my old credit card, ive had several emails since saying my card has expired and they cannot take payment and my subscription would cease shortly if payment is not made.
 
neil_g said:
sounds odd to me.

i had an experian subscription on my old credit card, ive had several emails since saying my card has expired and they cannot take payment and my subscription would cease shortly if payment is not made.
Click to expand...

Well that's what I thought. I also don't understand how you're meant to be protected when purchasing on a credit card, but yet Natwest have just said that they can't do anything about it, that I need to take it up with the NFL, and that if that doesn't work then I'd need to speak with Trading Standards. There doesn't seem to be much support for an issue such as this. So it is left to me, a single consumer, to take it up with a massive organisation. Great stuff!
 
ron3003 said:
Just had exactly this kind of situation with Microsoft billing. Basically my wife bought the Xbox Live Family Gold package when it was released using her debit card to prevent the children being able to purchase stuff through the dashboard as only the principal account holder was authorized to pay. Couple of years on and Microsoft pull the plug on Family Gold around the same time as her card expired.
Back end of June an email comes in stating that an attempt to take payment had failed and to update her card on the Microsoft billing site. Smelling a rat I check her statement and indeed they have taken £39.99 using her card over six months out of date to purchase a single Gold Membership, a service she has never requested.
Using online chat I was able to convince MS to refund her as the account they renewed had never been used online by her and was just set up to control any attempted online purchases. The fun started when six weeks later they had failed to repay her money because the card they were storing was expired, they had no trouble taking money off the card but apparently were unable to refund back to it :mad:
Eventually after lots of to-ing and fro-ing between MS and Lloyds I had to enable a new card (with a block on any outgoing transactions to MS placed on it by Lloyds) on the MS billing site just to get her refund authorized. Needless to say I removed that card from MS billing records immediately the refund came back.
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I don't really get how these companies can get away with this to be honest. From my point of view, transactions such as this are unlawful. I can understand that it can auto-renew when the card is valid, but how can that even begin to happen when the card you used is null and void? I particularly love that they weren't able to refund you because the card had expired, but yet they are able to take the charge from the expired card in the first place. That's just wrong! That then leaves it up to us to waste time jumping through hoops just to get our money back.
 
neil_g said:
sounds odd to me.

i had an experian subscription on my old credit card, ive had several emails since saying my card has expired and they cannot take payment and my subscription would cease shortly if payment is not made.
Click to expand...

Their billing was probably just setup to take normal payments each month/whenever instead of the continuous card authority thing daz mentioned.

It's why the pay day lenders all want credit/debit card info, so they can take their payments no matter what you do.
 
This continuous card authority thing is actually quite scary. How many people that have credit cards are actually aware of such a system? To me, when a card expires, that's it, done, nobody with those details should ever be able to take money from it until you as the consumer update the system with the new details. I had absolutely no idea that companies, even when asking for the expiration date and CVV code on the card, can actually ignore these and just charge to the card using the account number. It kinda makes most security systems flawed and utterly useless. Why ask for this information in the first place? Better yet, why do they even exist on the card if they can be ignored? Utterly pointless imo.
 
I've had this before on a Halifax One card so it's not restricted to Natwest. I was surprised but when I spoke to them and investigated I got a similar answer. In my case I wanted to keep the service so I didn't bother getting a refund or anything.
 
Had something similar happen on my Visa Debit card a few years back, travel insurance were auto-renewing annually on a card that expired during the first year (or maybe second) I purchased from them.

Basically it is wrong. As already written by others, if we went on the high street with our expired card, surely we would have our purchases declined!
 
Yeah, this isn't restricted to Natwest credit cards. It's a problem/quirk with the underlying system.

I had exactly the same thing happen to me. It was a paid for Vimeo subscription.

It was one of this things that the extra year didn't hurt me and I had no additional charges but I did EXACTLY the same as you in terms of saying to myself "oh right, card has expired, well that's fine I'll just let it run out".
 
NexusK said:
Their billing was probably just setup to take normal payments each month/whenever instead of the continuous card authority thing daz mentioned.

It's why the pay day lenders all want credit/debit card info, so they can take their payments no matter what you do.
Click to expand...

but surely the change of expiry and you'll get a new signature strip code too would stop any payments from coming through. at least you need those to get through a payment vendor such as datacash.
 
neil_g said:
but surely the change of expiry and you'll get a new signature strip code too would stop any payments from coming through. at least you need those to get through a payment vendor such as datacash.
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Well that's what I thought but it doesn't work that way apparently. I am going to have a word with the bank again tonight and see why they are unable to help.
 
CHokKA said:
This continuous card authority thing is actually quite scary. How many people that have credit cards are actually aware of such a system? To me, when a card expires, that's it, done, nobody with those details should ever be able to take money from it until you as the consumer update the system with the new details. I had absolutely no idea that companies, even when asking for the expiration date and CVV code on the card, can actually ignore these and just charge to the card using the account number. It kinda makes most security systems flawed and utterly useless. Why ask for this information in the first place? Better yet, why do they even exist on the card if they can be ignored? Utterly pointless imo.
Click to expand...

This is why you shouldn't repeat pay for anything using a card, always use direct debit, as that way you are protected and can stop it anytime you want.
If you give them your 16 digit number, for a repeating service, it can be a nightmare to stop.

Read about it on moneysavingexpert, Martin Lewis has been telling people this for years.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
This is why you shouldn't repeat pay for anything using a card, always use direct debit, as that way you are protected and can stop it anytime you want.
If you give them your 16 digit number, for a repeating service, it can be a nightmare to stop.

Read about it on moneysavingexpert, Martin Lewis has been telling people this for years.
Click to expand...

It's the first I've heard about it to be honest. I always thought that when the card expired, that was that, all done.
 
CHokKA said:
Well that's what I thought. I also don't understand how you're meant to be protected when purchasing on a credit card, but yet Natwest have just said that they can't do anything about it, that I need to take it up with the NFL, and that if that doesn't work then I'd need to speak with Trading Standards. There doesn't seem to be much support for an issue such as this. So it is left to me, a single consumer, to take it up with a massive organisation. Great stuff!
Click to expand...

Take it up with the NFL ? Do they expect you to ring Roger Goodell or something ? :D

I would be asking for a chargeback as it is still a purchase.

Try using this letter and see if it helps any

http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/action/letter-to-make-a-chargeback-claim-
 
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