So now I do things one at a time.
E.g. To cancel a card, first move all money (or debts) from acct A to acct B. Go home. Couple of days later, pay any outstanding fees of acct A. Go home. Couple of days later, request cancellation. Inevitably find that something else needs to be done, so do that thing. Go home. Couple of days later....
You get the idea. It sucks big time, but I've found it's better that way, since the probability of error is somewhat lower (and even then it happens!)
As in not worth my time at all to fix some company's internal fuckups versus wait a few years for nobody else to care either.
Before me, the car was owned by my then-partner, who had just moved from the UK to California. I was to sell the car on her behalf, and the registered owner being in a different country is a really suspicious warning sign so we changed the ownership to me so I could sell it more easily.
A week later, I did sell it, and did all the relevant change-of-ownership paperwork again.
Six months later, the police sent me — not my partner, not the new owner — a speeding ticket. It took more than one go for me to prove I didn’t own the car.
Either you didn't or the bank who emitted the card might have a huge PITA due to passing the transaction to a bank account which should not be.
A couple of weeks ago, I received this stern letter informing me that I'm "not acting in accordance with my cardholder agreement / unpaid bills / unfulfilled obligations / we've cancelled your account / etc." It lists a card number I don't recognize. I call them right away.
Turns out it was the personal VISA I cancelled two years ago. Around six months ago, a transaction went through on the account. Then I didn't pay off the transaction. Of course I didn't: I received no notice, no mail, no phone call, nothing. Why would I, for a card that at that point had been cancelled for 1.5 years? So after months of "defaulting" they freaked out, "cancelled" the card, put a black mark on my credit rating, and sent me that letter.
Meanwhile I have been doing business with the bank, and with my business VISA (same exact companies!) the whole time.
Trying to rectify this issue was a bureaucratic nightmare, where I got shuttled from my bank branch over to VISA and back again. It featured enjoyable conversations that started with things like, "for identity verification purposes, please give me the three digits on the back of your card" (hadn't had it in two years!) and ended with "I'm afraid we can't verify your identity".
What was especially frustrating was I managed to find the paperwork for the card cancellation. I have a signed and dated document that says right on it, "Card destroyed in branch".
After seven or eight interactions with VISA and my bank, I finally managed to get them to resolve the issue. But this all could have been avoided had they simply called me or mailed me a letter. Instead, they claimed that they'd sent statements to the "online portal" which, of course, I did not have access to, since I'd closed the account!