I've never owned a credit card that would allow me to "block" a merchant from charging me (not saying they don't exist). With a conventional card you can dispute the charge and perform a charge-back, but it's still up to you to ensure that the merchant does not keep charging you. I can see why the rep was confused.

Normally if a merchant is charging your card without your permission you contact them first. If it's a recurring fraudulent charge and they won't respond you contact the police, report it to the bank, and have the bank issue a new card.

Now if this is a subscription service offered through the News app I have no idea what the proper procedure would be beyond simply cancelling the subscription and requesting a refund. But even then you aren't "blocking" a merchant.

I do not miss the US banking system... with my bank in the EU, I can block merchants, approve or deny direct debits (ACH equivalent), and I’ve set my debit card with two pins: one draws from my account, and the other from my joint account.

And direct debits and transfers are free ( barring potential currency exchange )

Could you share what bank this is?

Couldn't see anything about merchant blocking on there. This would be an excellent feature (I like control). I signed up years ago and never really used Bunq as I didn't see what it added.

How have you found support? I've found Monzo to be fairly lacklustre as they've grown, so considered making my Starling my primary. However, Starling don't really have any particularly exciting features that would motivate me to switch.

Edit: Their site no longer accepts UK numbers. Yet again, FUCK BREXIT.

Edit 2: Managed to reactivate my account, and for obvious reasons they don't seem to support FPS or have an account number either, so not really great for a primary UK account.

> How have you found support?

There was one time an ATM machine ate my money. Ten minutes later I got my money back, after sending pics of the error, receipt, etc.

The only other time was trying to set my son’s account up and I screwed it up pretty bad and accidentally created duplicate accounts.

> they don't seem to support FPS

It adheres to the Dutch and EU instant payments system, I don’t know how compatible that is with the UK’s. I can send you a £ and you can send me a £ and we can see how long it takes to get there.

> or have an account number either

As in you don’t have an IBAN?

Aye, I forgot it was EU only rather than EU+UK (ala Revolut), and as a UK resident it would be a bit silly having my primary account be an EU one (if even allowed).

I like Revolut, a bit expensive now that flying isn't a thing anymore (I loved their lounge access).

> I've never owned a credit card that would allow me to "block" a merchant from charging me

American Express will let you do it, but it can (as far as I can tell) only be done with a phone call.

Barclaycard was able to do that over the phone as well.

+1. Credit Cards are not PayPal. You can only cancel recurring transactions on PayPal because those are set up directly on PayPal.

If you find someone is charging your card, ask them to stop, and to refund you. Only if they refuse should you attempt to cancel the charge via your card. This results in a chargeback to the place that charged you, which typically comes with a hefty fee for them.

Several credit cards allow you to generate a new card number to use with a specific merchant. This allows you to shut down that number once you no longer want to be billed by them.

It's a little more work, but foolproof.

That's not limited to credit cards, Revolut( UK) and Aumax (France) fintechs offer it on regular debit cards.

I've done it with Wells Fargo and Ally Bank in the US, they just made me put an expiration on it years in the future. What banks have you been unable to do this with?

Holy Molly! Any credit card company would have done this in 2 minutes and refunded the charges while they investigate. Because this is Apple, one card transaction dispute requires you to change your AppleID password. What a mess!!!

I was considering getting an Apple Card but now I am running the other way.

It’s Goldman Sachs in this case, not Apple. While a few companies run their own banks to issue credit cards, most have partnerships with banks like Synchrony, Capital One, and Chase. Depending on the scope of the partnership, customer service may be handled directly by the bank or by the retailer. In Apple’s case, they’ll explicitly say they’re working for Goldman Sachs.

If there's an unauthorised transaction on your card, that suggests your credit card details have been compromised, no? Additionally, they say the transaction happened via Apple Pay, so it would have been authenticated via a device, so it appears a device was also compromised?

Isn't changing compromised details common place? The agent did offer to do it immediately but the customer said "no not now" and then ignored it for two months.

"The product was great until it wasn't. The amount of hours I've lost to try and fix this, including talking to numerous people on the phone, is absurd. "

I find that this is the case with distressing frequency with nearly any big-company product I use. I haven't had this problem with Apple yet (which is kind of surprising, given how much Apple there is in my life), but it feels like it's an outgrowth of corporate size and scale more than anything else.

The older I get, the more I loathe the way corporations create an environment where no one is responsible for anything.

Quote from this, including typos: "I will need to changed your card number for your security and protection. Since Apple Pay was used, you will need to changed your Apple ID password."

Whaaaaat?

If you read till the end, you'll realize that the original support request was framed in a way that caused the agent to assume the customer was reporting a fraud or account compromise.

It was only down in the chain, around November, when the customer mentioned that they may have accidentally signed up for a WaPo subscription (due to dark patterns), and not that their account was compromised.

By then it was too late, as Apple had already applied the nuclear option of a password reset, to keep the customer's account secure.

To be honest I don't remember signing up for the account. The fact that Apple Pay was used makes me think somehow I did it on my phone by accident. I do read the WaPo on occasion, so that sounds like the most likely scenario. And they are full of dark patterns, which I guess Apple at least tacitly supports.

But PayPal's had that see and control your subscriptions ability for many years and it's embarrassing for Apple to not have that at this point. And then to nuke the account creds was crazy. And then the fact that I was literally texting with the agent on the phone # that they were trying to text to verify the account, and I was getting nothing, was crazy. And the fact that they couldn't override. And then the fact that while waiting for a verification code that never arrived, they booted me from support. And then the fact that the next agent had zero context, crazy. And then on and on. And then that's before all the phone calls! It's sort of like I think they are trolling me.

> But PayPal's had that see and control your subscriptions ability for many years and it's embarrassing for Apple to not have that at this point

They do. Any subscriptions that Apple bills for are all visible in a single list. But Apple Pay or Apple's Credit Card is not PayPal. They're not compariable products.

The "problem" here is that these are just charges to your credit card. Paypal is not a credit card (well, ignoring their credit products, but I presume that's not what you're talking about), its not a like-for-like comparison.

I don't think it's commonplace for a bank to show a list of subscriptions for a credit card - that's not how banking infrastructure works (I don't think) for credit card transations. By bank does have a feature where it guesses recurring payments to help me plan, but it's not an actual subscription in the way that Direct Debits, or App Store, or Paypal subscriptions are.

How would Apple pull subscriptions off? Centrally manageable subscriptions are a part of the PayPal product API, not of general finance. How is your credit card supposed to understand if a recurring payment is due to a subscription or a regular habit?

There's precedent for banks doing this, so it's certainly possible.

For example, Australian banks are required to provide a list of recurring payments for the last 13 months upon request [1]. The rationale is to make it easier to switch banks, forcing banks to be more competitive.

[1] https://bankingcode.org.au/resources/2019-banking-code-of-pr...

How would Apple pull that off? Centrally manageable subscriptions are a part of the PayPal product API, not of general finance. How is your credit card supposed to understand if a recurring payment is due to a subscription or a regular habit?

It’s not the support agent’s fault - it’s the system. Nice to see you realized that in the thread.

I often too harsh on support agents. I love the Amazon way where you can always just email jeff at amazon if you have a serious problem, and it gets routed appropriately. That gives me peace of mind and probably makes me treat any entry level support agent at Amazon better.

I speak bluntly but quickly reverse course when someone steps up and does the right thing.

I think support personnel belief while going off their script (as he picked #4 I didn't do the transaction) was that someone guessed/hijacked is apple account and stated using it to buy things on the internet, and that's what derailed the whole support ticket.

they immediately switched gear from support request into a security request, which pumps all the brakes on your account. I'm unfamiliar with apple, but banks will react more or less the same with insured credit cards, because they're the one on the hooks for any fraudulent purchase.

It sounds more like you had a problem with Apple Pay, and the fact that the card in question was an Apple Card is incidental. If you hadn't told them that someone was fraudulently using your Apple Pay on a recurring monthly basis, I can't imagine they'd have concluded that your account was compromised. If it was a direct card transaction, they'd have just issued a new number and been done with it.

The confusion around Apple Pay and Apple Card is a design problem created by Apple. It's way too damn confusing, and you can see we were constantly getting routed in the wrong direction. They should have called it Goldman Sachs Card. It was bullsh*t to find out that's what it really was and that the support was atrocious.

I don't disagree that branding things as "Apple This" and "Apple That" is confusing, especially when they sound interchangeable. I kinda understand why they didn't want to brand it as a GS card, because they're trying to go for a lot higher integration than they could achieve with a normal third-party relationship. But then they still periodically remind the customer that it is in fact a GS card, rather than just handling all the customer service themselves. It's not ideal at all.

lol I had a similar problem, but I just wasnt an a-hole and they blocked New York Times from charging my account with no waiting and no questions.

The difference is, I told them I had signed up for it, but was unable to cancel due to NYT's policies on canceling accounts.

Maybe next time be truthful. You don't accidentally buy subscriptions because it's full of ad's. You signed up for the sub. or a trial with a delayed payment and forgot.

I don't remember signing up for it. Not out of the question that someone in my family did with my devices. There needs to be an option "5. Some crappy dark pattern subscription that I don't want". It would be very easy to build some type of subscription service that autopauses if you don't use it for a month(s). I did not log in to WaPo and so shouldn't have been getting charged. Let's keep the pressure on the businesses to discourage dark patterns and not nitpick on the consumer because I didn't adequately respond to a set of options that left out a critical and common category of disputes.

Thanks for posting long chat with redactions. That iMessage thread you posted is quite frustrating to read through. I can only empathize you for going through that horrifying experience. Hope you find a resolution soon.

based on this horror, I'm going to stop using this card. I do not want my apple id locked out because of a stupid credit card issue.

That may be an overreaction. If you read through the transcript, the problem clearly wasn't the Apple Card. It would have happened with any credit card. OP told support that his Apple Pay had been compromised, and was continuing to be compromised monthly. They correctly concluded that the fix was to stop the ongoing Apple Pay fraud by denying the attacker access to his Apple ID. He tried to blow them off but it was too late.

As an Apple Card user myself (and not without my own criticism of the service, to be honest), I'm not sure how I'd end up in a similar situation. The card sends me a push notification in real time when a charge happens. So I'd have seen every one of those months of WaPo subscription. I'd have deduced it was a subscription, and that the WaPo isn't selling retail goods and so it isn't likely a fraud issue. Apple Pay would have had it's own notifications as well. The easiest answer would be to tell WaPo to stop. The next best answer if that didn't immediately work would be to ask Apple how to stop a subscription I signed up for, not tell them I don't remember doing it and therefore it's unauthorized fraud.

I think Apple has earned plenty of criticism, but let's keep it real, at least.

> The easiest answer would be to tell WaPo to stop.

I see you've never used WaPo or NYTimes before :)

I do obviously deeply regret engaging with support on this issue, and my god I would have paid $100 nevermind worrying about $10 to not have to deal with this (still ongoing) issue.

But think about how bad all of the things are here:

1. A product named "Apple Card" that requires "Apple Pay" and feels like the same thing, but apparently is 2 different things.

2. Not only 2 different things, but 2 different companies. "Apple Card" is really "Goldman Sachs Card", but you don't find that out until something goes wrong.

3. But then Goldman Sachs somehow can interact and control your Apple Id account.

4. But there's no communication between support at the 2 companies, and all context is lost when you switch to Goldman Sachs.

5. If you at any point in time mistakenly say "Apple Card" and not "Apple Pay", or vice versa, even though I only ever use both together as a consumer, they will say "oh actually I think you're in the wrong department, let me transfer you", and then you have to start over.

On and on and on. Absolutely atrocious.

But the bottom line, the root cause, is this: payments providers should be on the side of the consumer, and not the merchants. I used to work at Visa. I know how the system works. I know anything is possible. The idea that Apple can't show people all recurring subscriptions and allow 1 click to cancel is bullshit. They absolutely can build that. It would be the right thing to do for consumers. But this is the Goldman Card. Not the Apple Card. And I don't see Goldman as a champion of the end user.