Practical Travel Safety Issues - CLEAR unauthorized renewal.

:mad:

Checked cc statement and had $179 clear charge.

Odd.

Was clear member in 2007 ish timeframe when i flew out of mco frequently, but never renewed clear upon moving and after they pulled the plug.


Well, somehow clear has my new cc expiration dates and just hit me with a $179 fee


Recommend everyone be diligent about this.



Doug

Somehow CLEAR had your new cc expiration dates? Just how do you propose they managed that?

some services that are setup as renewals can work without new exp dates

Somehow CLEAR had your new cc expiration dates? Just how do you propose they managed that?

They could do what many systems do, running a script on the expired expiration dates to update them by one month and try to run it through again. Once it succeeds, you are good for another two or three years. We did it nightly, so within a month we would hit the new expiration date.

And some systems don't need the expiration date for the charge to go through.

That's why the CCV code changes too, so that people just can't keep guessing expiration dates.

:mad:

Checked cc statement and had $179 clear charge.

Odd.

Was clear member in 2007 ish timeframe when i flew out of mco frequently, but never renewed clear upon moving and after they pulled the plug.


Well, somehow clear has my new cc expiration dates and just hit me with a $179 fee


Recommend everyone be diligent about this.



Doug
Just initiate a chargeback online (unless your original CLEAR contract included the auto-renew option).

As an aside, even though auto-renew is a useful function for many services, it's a bad idea because over time people forget and these charges show up. Then the vendor can successfully rebut the chargeback.

They could do what many systems do, running a script on the expired expiration dates to update them by one month and try to run it through again. Once it succeeds, you are good for another two or three years. We did it nightly, so within a month we would hit the new expiration date.

I've had accounts with automatic, recurring credit card billing that send me warnings to update the expiration date. And I've had other accounts that I'll log into and see the new expiration date, even though I am certain that I have not updated it yet.

I've always assumed that my credit card company somehow supplied the biller with the new expiration date. But I guess it's possible that the biller just kept trying new dates until it finds one that works. Most of the time, the new expiration date is exactly 2 or 3 years from the old one, so I suppose it can't really be that hard to figure out....