Have you considered cancelling your credit card?
Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#12I'm trying to think of how to avoid something like this ever happening to me, and I think the lesson I can learn from this is to use a debit card instead of a credit card? That way, the account can go to 0. That debit card would only be for services with automated billing like this, and would have limited funds. I mean, I imagine the main problem here is that you can't close your credit card because the bank now says…
> They forwarded from one card to another? AWS charged a closed card and the bank forwarded it? Yup. > By the way, if you can't authenticate with Amazon as the rightful owner of that account, it sounds unreasonable for them to comply to a stranger asking them to simply remove a credit card number of some account. I disagree. If I can provide a full credit card number, they should be able to remove it from all account…
I feel for the Kaskaesk nightmare, but isn't this what courts are for? A judge should be able to adjudicate this conflict especially if you give convincing evidence of your communications with both Amazon and the Bank. My venue of legal approach (ianal and not even US) would be that once you show you are not the account holder (since hacked any fully shut out) anymore you don't have a contract with Amazon and they don't have the title to bill you. If they can show you ARE the account holder, than you can cancel. Both ways of that approach before a judge will get your problem sorted?
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#13They've been sending me a bill for three years now on an account they closed. I could not get the assholes to kill the account so I changed credit cards. The support was helpful but gave me phone numbers to call that did not exist and just kept saying they can't do anything else.
I threatened with lawyers and I have full correspondence on my behalf kept safe so they can just fuck off with their bills.
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#14[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#15[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#16I'm trying to think of how to avoid something like this ever happening to me, and I think the lesson I can learn from this is to use a debit card instead of a credit card? That way, the account can go to 0. That debit card would only be for services with automated billing like this, and would have limited funds. I mean, I imagine the main problem here is that you can't close your credit card because the bank now says…
> I think the lesson I can learn from this is to use a debit card instead of a credit card? That way, the account can go to 0. That debit card would only be for services with automated billing like this, and would have limited funds.
Generally speaking, this is a bad idea. Credit cards have more legal protections than debit cards[1], giving you more avenues for recourse.
Banks can also choose to honor a transaction and and overdraw your account. This can result in a negative balance, leaving you with fewer legal protections on the original transaction (since it was debit instead of credit) and owing money to your bank. Plus possible overdraft fees.
> Or do you mean that you requested a new card without closing the old one? If they're both open, it's not that charges are being forwarded, but rather that the old card is still valid and both are linked to the same credit account. Maybe you can ask them to close it?
It's a feature of the processing networks called account updater[2]. It sounds like the credit line itself was not canceled, only the card. With a new card issued against the same credit line. The link at [2] mentions the logic for when account updater can happen, but essentially if a merchant has successfully processed your card in the last year and it gets declined on subsequent transactions (because you canceled it or it expired), they can request the new card information to retry the transaction against. It's designed to prevent lapses in recurring payments when cards expire or get re-issued, while limiting exposure to fraud since new merchants without a history of transactions on your account can't get the new account info.
If you're ever in this situation, what you want to do is 1) initiate a chargeback dispute on the initial transaction and 2) explicitly request your bank to decline future transactions from that merchant (referencing the initial transaction so they know explicitly which merchant). The merchant should then get hit with this[3] decline code next time they attempt to charge you, which will be a hard decline that indicates it was due to a cardholder-requested block.
That way you only have to deal with one dispute involving your credit card company and any subsequent transactions are prevented from even getting to that point (and if one slips through, the fact that you requested a merchant block becomes it's own supporting evidence for disputing a charge). As OP experienced, repetitive disputes tend to shift over time from the consumer's favor to the merchant's favor, so only disputing the transactions after they occur only tend to work the first few times.
[1] https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/cnwin1213/stopp...
[2] https://articles.braintreepayments.com/guides/account-update...
[3] https://articles.braintreepayments.com/control-panel/transac...
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#17These are fraudulent charges to occur after you've closed the AWS account. Cancel the credit card account, on the basis they have violated their fiduciary duty to the customer. Tell them you're filling a lawsuit.
File small claim lawsuit for the improper charges within 10 business days, if the bank hasn't made this right.
You have proof of cancellation of the AWS account? That's how you will win.
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#18I'm trying to think of how to avoid something like this ever happening to me, and I think the lesson I can learn from this is to use a debit card instead of a credit card? That way, the account can go to 0. That debit card would only be for services with automated billing like this, and would have limited funds. I mean, I imagine the main problem here is that you can't close your credit card because the bank now says…
> They forwarded from one card to another? AWS charged a closed card and the bank forwarded it? Yup. > By the way, if you can't authenticate with Amazon as the rightful owner of that account, it sounds unreasonable for them to comply to a stranger asking them to simply remove a credit card number of some account. I disagree. If I can provide a full credit card number, they should be able to remove it from all account…
So anyone you ever bought something from with that credit card should be able to kill your AWS account with a simple phone call?
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#19I'm trying to think of how to avoid something like this ever happening to me, and I think the lesson I can learn from this is to use a debit card instead of a credit card? That way, the account can go to 0. That debit card would only be for services with automated billing like this, and would have limited funds. I mean, I imagine the main problem here is that you can't close your credit card because the bank now says…
> They forwarded from one card to another? AWS charged a closed card and the bank forwarded it? Yup. > By the way, if you can't authenticate with Amazon as the rightful owner of that account, it sounds unreasonable for them to comply to a stranger asking them to simply remove a credit card number of some account. I disagree. If I can provide a full credit card number, they should be able to remove it from all account…
The AWS account is what's compromised. And Amazon is aiding the attacker in committing fraud. Both AWS and the attacker benefit from the continued charges to your account.
Every AWS and bank account has clear terms including how to unilaterally close the account. I'm not sure why you're slow walking this rather than pulling the fire alarm on both accounts.
Re: Ask HN: AWS refuses to stop billing me for a compromised account
#20The only issue here I ser is that you haven’t bothered Amazon enough that the account was inaccessible. Everything else is working as intended.