What should I do with cc taking unauthorized autopay?

[twuoo]

I had cancelled my autopay on a Chase cc some time ago. The last time I paid my cc min was by going through the online account to initiate a payment. That was in April.

I made no payments in May.

Surprise, surprise, I got an "autopay" deducted from my bank account today. I went back through the online accounts to cancel (yet again) the autopays.

The amount withdrawen was less than $30 for a min. However, I'm worried that this will continue.

What should I do?

I'm living paycheck to paycheck now in a big way and $5 could mean a bounced check or not.

Thanks for advice!

[lrprn]

Write a certified letter return receipt to your bank that states that all automatic payments from your accounts have been cancelled and that no creditor is allowed to automatically withdraw money from the account without your prior permission.

Then send a certified letter, return receipt letter to Chase withdrawing permission to take automatic withdrawals from your account. Send the same letter to any other creditors who have current permission to withdraw from your account that you want to stop.

If any creditor continues to take automatically take money out after receiving your letter, you have legal grounds to sue.

[BKOnce]

Fastest & Easy way is to.. cancel/close your bank account, open new one .

[twuoo]

I promptly went through all my online accounts and deleted the bank account information.

Some of the cc are sneaky and don't let you delete: american express and boa.

So for those two, I made up a "new account" with the correct routing number, but just consecqutive numbers for the "account number".

Now if ANY of these banks still manage to withdraw from my bank, I have printed documents showing that these accounts were either cancelled, or for the ones I made up, don't exist.

So maybe this should be put up as a sticky somewhere so that other people will know to cancel their online bank account information as well.

It just wasn't something I'd considered would happen since I cancelled all my autopays.

[HHM]

I promptly went through all my online accounts and deleted the bank account information.

Some of the cc are sneaky and don't let you delete: American express and boa.

So for those two, I made up a "new account" with the correct routing number, but just consecutive numbers for the "account number".

Now if ANY of these banks still manage to withdraw from my bank, I have printed documents showing that these accounts were either cancelled, or for the ones I made up, don't exist.

So maybe this should be put up as a sticky somewhere so that other people will know to cancel their online bank account information as well.

It just wasn't something I'd considered would happen since I cancelled all my autopays.

Inserting "false" accounts was NOT the way to go...it is never a good idea to "lie", because, I can guarantee, that under the general terms that relate to your account, any false information provided by you to the credit card company may become grounds to challenge the discharge of the debt in BK.

Best advice, as has already been said, close your bank account and open a new one at a different bank.

[CindyLou]

BEFORE you close any account, please make sure that you are able to open a new account given your currenct financial situation. Also, I doubt putting a bogus checking acct number could hurt a thing. It could have been a typo for all anyone knows. Keep us posted.

[wayne-o]

I agree the bogus acct number was not a good idea. Your bogus # might actually be someones real number. I would hate to have that happen to me.

[twuoo]

well..i did change the acct # to a bank that I have a bare $100 minimum. So that's all done.

And the bogus acct # wasn't very inventive, I used: 123456789

So what are the chances somebody really would have that with that specific routing number? I'd think pretty slim

Thanks for the help tho!

[nosrus77]

I'd go to your bank, too. They can help you if it were an unauthorized pull, and will usually refund the $30 as well. They will investigate if it is a high amount and send a letter from the security department to your cc company.

[twuoo]

The bank won't help me. They tell me to contact the cc agency. I'm just going to let this one go since it's not a huge amount. I don't really want to draw anymore attention to the inevitable bk

[magyar123]

I hope that people learn from the above issue - NEVER sign up for anyone to automatically deduct a monthly payment from your account, not the power co., not the phone co, - no one. If you don't like to write checks/mail them, just make a one-time online payment once a month yourself.

[CindyLou]

Since my bk has been discharged I have slowing gone back to the autopay options with my Car/Homeowners Insurance, Disability Insurance, Electricity, Gas, auto drafted from my account. I go crazy trying to keep up. I keep the big ones (car notes and rent) for one time payment cuz i have grace periods on those and it give me little wiggle room.

[twuoo]

I hope that people learn from the above issue - NEVER sign up for anyone to automatically deduct a monthly payment from your account, not the power co., not the phone co, - no one. If you don't like to write checks/mail them, just make a one-time online payment once a month yourself.

I find this to be an onerous task. I for one, have a terrible memory and having to keep track of all the bills and when to pay them totally invites late fees galore. Not to mention wasting time putting the stamp on, mailing it and waiting for it to post.

I've paid my bills online whenever I can for the last 11 years now and it's been worth the convienience.

Your suggestion of making a once a month online payment is good. In relation to this issue, I was making once a month online payments since Feb, March and April. Not on autopay.

I stopped paying my cc mins in May.

The cc company took out an "autopay" in June, even though it wasn't set up.

Glich in their system? Maybe.