They are not guessing the expiry date - I believe it is a service provided by some credit card companies, possibly to large merchants. It happened to me for several years with my Yahoo Email account - that would renew for $20 / year even though my card expired twice during that time. It stopped after I reported my card as lost/stolen - and got a replacement card, so the actual card number changed. Fastest - albeit a bit drastic - way to get out of a recurring billing if you are having trouble cancelling.

That said, I'm not sure he can complain that a recurring subscription continued to, well, recur.

If their was fraud, you could get a chargeback, and I don't see that happening very often.

Guessing the new expiry date in order to exact a payment is taking an unauthorised payment. It can't be authorised because the card-holder can't authorise payments beyond the expiry date.

Taking a payment that isn't authorised by the card-holder by guessing some of the details of a card against the expectations of the card-holder appears to be fraudulent to me.

Even if you cancelled the card outright, you're generally technically (and legally) still on the hook for a subscription if you don't go and cancel. Read the ToS for just about any recurring subscription. It's your obligation to cancel, not their obligation to guess when you want to cancel. Honestly, I'm not sure how that's unfair; it's not a service provider's business to interpret your payment methods and how they might map to your desire to cancel or retain a service.

The only reason most services don't bother to pursue payment for expired cards is because it's not economic to do so. So when a card expires, they eventually mark the account as overdue and disable it. That's not the same as a clean cancellation; technically you still owe them for the services rendered between the last invoice and the final cancellation.

Maybe, that would depend on the legal terms under which you signed up. Mostly you sign up and pay for a fixed term. So contractually the expectation is that you don't continue payment.

If legally the payment is due, then that's still doesn't mean you can have authorised it on a card beyond the expiry date. Moreover you haven't authorised the payment with the new card (in the circumstances we're considering).

So the payment may be due, but it's been fraudulently acquired. There are procedures for collecting overdue amounts. Of course the companies don't want to follow those procedures and air their unfair [attempted] retention practices in court.

Look at the Amazon Prime TOS, in all-caps: "UNLESS YOU NOTIFY US BEFORE A CHARGE THAT YOU WANT TO CANCEL OR DO NOT WANT TO AUTO RENEW, YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR PRIME MEMBERSHIP WILL AUTOMATICALLY CONTINUE AND YOU AUTHORIZE US (WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU, UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW) TO COLLECT THE THEN-APPLICABLE MEMBERSHIP FEE AND ANY TAXES, USING ANY CREDIT CARD WE HAVE ON RECORD FOR YOU."

I'm guessing that their definition of "CREDIT CARD" is wide enough that they can roll the expiration date; when your card expiresd at Amazon you can just update the date without entering a "new card" - they consider the new physical card to be the same "payment method."

You have a remarkably apologetic attitude towards a scumbag industry.

Just to be clear, here's the modus operendi for the retention industry-

1) Trick or outright scam people into recurring subscriptions. I never told Consumer Reports I wanted my subscription to recur, and it provides absolutely zero value to me that they did so. If they hid text somewhere for this, it is a clear and obvious example that the industry desperately needs onerous rules and restrictions prohibiting this, such as a customer yearly opt in and double-positive recurrence opt-in (rather than some hidden subtext that oh by the way we have your credit card so have fun cancelling sucker).

2) Hide methods of cancelling said subscription behind as many layers as possibly: It is shocking how easy it is to sign up for many things versus what is needed to cancel the same (as if charges on my credit card are less of an issue for me than the possibility that online access might be temporarily delayed). In Consumer Reports case, you could not email or fill out an online form -- the single and only option was a limited hours telephone number that required lengthy wait times. They know that many people will avoid the time sucking tax. Xbox Live had a particularly hilarious system where not only did you have to phone a call center and sit on hold, your cancellation had to be immediate (despite the fact that all payments were for future services, when you disabled recurrence they immediately downgraded your account) which of course is meant to delay people from jumping through the hoops until the last day when they might forget or give up and boom, another month.

While much noise was raised about Apple shaking down the subscription industry on the iOS platform, they will have to simply eat that cost because people like me have absolutely zero trust in the industry, and I greatly respect how Apple not only constantly reminds me of subscriptions, they make cancelling any of them the easiest thing in the world, so those services that want subscribers need to actually work

Recurrence is a tax on the world. It is inefficient and obnoxious companies that turn their business model towards unsavoury tactics rather than actually providing value that keeps people from wanting to be their customer.

1) By reading this post you agree to subscribe to future posts at the economical cost of $14.49 per month, billed bi-annually.

To your points:

1. While there are dishonest sites, I'm sure you also have numerous recurring subscriptions with a whole bunch of services where that's exactly what you agreed to, and what you want. Your internet provider, your mobile phone provider, your cable company, etc. I realize you may have had an issue with one company, but that doesn't mean the subscription model can't be used in an honest, customer-focused way. I have subscriptions with utilities, online content services (Spotify), and even a podcast network and for 90% of situations, it works fine and there's no trick or scam.

2. I totally agree that companies should make it easy to cancel, and it's despicable if they don't. It's also generally bad business practice because it hurts your relationship with them. But again, there's lots of companies with recurring subscription models that handle this right: just look at Netflix. Not only will they cancel easily, they'll also put your account on hold if you're going on vacation, etc.

You don't need to play their game. Send them a letter cancelling and revoking the authorization to charge your credit card. When they charge you anyway, send a letter to your bank informing them of the unauthorized charge. You'll get the chargeback. Send another letter to the AG of your state, too, complaining about the credit card fraud.

There are whole industries built around billing people for services they don't actually want, and this is just an example of it. I completely understand that it is normal across the industry, but it is incredibly scummy and puts deception and evasion ahead of providing actual value.

You're saying this is a service you don't want, but it's unclear how the provider is supposed to guess that. You signed up for it, you haven't cancelled it, and now they're going to provide it and then seek payment for it. The failure to cancel is on you, not the provider. Even if you cancelled the card outright, in most good ToS, they'd still have a right to bill you directly for the service if you don't cancel.

Let's say I run a gym and you're a signed up member. If a new month starts, and you've got an active account, even if your card expires I'm still going to bill you for the month unless you come and tell me you want to cancel your membership. The two things are unrelated.

Yes, I will complain. Intrinsic in the notion that I'm not bothering to update billing information after numerous updates telling me that it will cancel if I don't is the conclusion that the service, and billings, will cease. Credit cards have expiry dates for a reason, and ultimately it is fraud that they effectively manufactured my info for me.

You're hoping that the natural expiration cycle of your physical card - not the account - will impact a transaction that doesn't actually involve that physical implement. I can see where you're coming from, but I don't know that you really have a right to expect the expiration of your physical card to impact an existing business relationship with a third party that involves recurring charges (that you have likely agreed to pay regardless of your card's validity, or credit limit.)

I've worked on these kinds of renewal systems for large sites and generally, users don't mind them because the reverse case - where 4% of the users lose access each month because their physical card expired - sucks for both the site and the end users who don't expect access to be cut off.

If you want to use credit card changes as a shortcut for properly cancelling your subscription, you probably need to actually change the card number.