Last June, I tried to cancel a CC. The woman I spoke to basically refused and I told her to commit an impossible act and hung up, knowing it expired in Oct. A replacement came and I never activated it. Nonetheless they accepted a (recurring) charge. Am I responsible? The charge was for a newspaper that I never read and my wife almost never does and I would be happy to drop it.
The activation bit is mostly a farce. Recurring charges keep getting applied and in the modern world the card just requires a PIN with the first use before you can use tap.
I’ve had cards that I stopped using, and never bothered to cancel. Eventually I’d get an updated card, and I’d never bother to activate it, because I never used it. Three things have happened.
- Nothing, they send me a new card every four years, and I completely ignore it.
- They send me another new card after a year or so with a note saying, “you never activated the last one we sent, maybe you misplaced it, so here is another one, please start using it.”
- After a few years or so they send me a letter saying the account was closed for being inactive.