Watch out for 're-bills' in Paypal

7 replies
I've advised many members here to carefully check their 'subscriptions' and 'recurring payments' in their paypal accts. Subscriptions is self explanatory - 'recurring payments' are usually your hosting and domain auto renewal and online sites you routinely buy from.

I didn't know about 're-bills'.


Had a 'thanks for renewing your subscription' message from a software site. I purchased the software, didn't like it, didn't use it - had checked my subscriptions and nothing there so forgot about it. A year later - charged again for the product. Immediately contacted seller and JVZoo to say 'there is no subscription - want a refund'.....was told 'it's a "re-bill" and no refunds provided.

Turns out you have to KNOW to look for 're-bill' in Paypal in order to find such charges. Just searching for subscriptions or 'upcoming charges' won't bring it up.I don't doubt it's legal - but it's deliberately deceptive. No advance email of an 'upcoming payment' - no mention of the word 're-bill' except when you say "there was no subscription".


Just posting this so others won't fall for it....now we need to look at both subscriptions AND re-bills in our paypal accts. Maybe others already knew this - but I didn't. JVZoo rep said they are aware of this as a problem for buyers - but allow sellers to use it on their platform.


Good idea to check your paypal accounts for 'subscriptions' and for 're-bills' every few months to avoid unwanted charges.
#paypal #rebills #watch
  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Evans
    Baffling isn't it?

    It's the type of logic I'd expect from Google, since they often twist the most simple of concepts.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sid Hale
    Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

    Had a 'thanks for renewing your subscription' message from a software site. I purchased the software, didn't like it, didn't use it - had checked my subscriptions and nothing there so forgot about it. A year later - charged again for the product. Immediately contacted seller and JVZoo to say 'there is no subscription - want a refund'.....was told 'it's a "re-bill" and no refunds provided.

    Turns out you have to KNOW to look for 're-bill' in Paypal in order to find such charges. Just searching for subscriptions or 'upcoming charges' won't bring it up.I don't doubt it's legal - but it's deliberately deceptive. No advance email of an 'upcoming payment' - no mention of the word 're-bill' except when you say "there was no subscription".


    Just posting this so others won't fall for it....now we need to look at both subscriptions AND re-bills in our paypal accts. Maybe others already knew this - but I didn't. JVZoo rep said they are aware of this as a problem for buyers - but allow sellers to use it on their platform.
    Kay...

    This has been an issue with JVZoo since "Day 1", because they use the Adaptive Payments model with Paypal.

    Since Paypal's Adaptive Payments has NO facility to handle subscriptions, JVZoo implemented their own re-billing mechanism (where they get the customer to agree to re-billing) in order to emulate the subscription feature.

    Any other platform using Paypal's Adaptive Payments system has the same problem (re: subscriptions). Some may have adopted a similar solution, others (i.e. Warrior Payments???) may have opted to disallow "subscriptions" altogether.
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    Sid Hale
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    The same goes with 'infinity billing' schemes of certain product categories

    Be careful out there
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  • Profile picture of the author Kay King
    I guess the surprise is that I haven't run into this in the past.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jimster23
    Thanks for the warning. It seems PayPal is getting to be a not so user friendly place any more.
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    • Profile picture of the author naviown
      Originally Posted by Jimster23 View Post

      Thanks for the warning. It seems PayPal is getting to be a not so user friendly place any more.
      Especially with the return fees... but it's on hold currently and waiting to be reviewed.
      But all in all... these are bad business practices. Sorry OP that you lost 99$
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  • Profile picture of the author gnugent
    I think I had one of these recently. Got rebilled for some product I'd forgotten about and was given a JVZoo transaction ID to look up in PayPal. Couldn't find it anywhere in PayPal. I had to go to JVZoo to get it sorted out. Not what I'd call customer-friendly! More like deceptive. I now keep a calendar of recurring payments (esp. ones that recur on longer time periods) so I can see what's coming up and put a stop to them if necessary.

    At least with PayPal subscriptions, you have the option of manually cancelling them. I hate subscriptions paid by credit card (and more services are going this route). I recently had an annual rebill on my card that I didn't realise was an annual subscription. I had received no email from the company alerting me that the next payment was due. And after payment was extracted, no invoice was issued either.

    My card company was useless. Even though I'm the card holder, I'm not allowed to cancel a subscription! No, only the entity receiving the subscription payment can cancel it. How nuts is that?

    So I have to contact a vendor and request that they cancel my subscription.

    It reminded that I had a similar issue several years ago when I tried to cancel a card-based subscription. I contacted the company in question several times. They never responded, and each month another payment was taken.

    I asked my card company for help after explaining the situation. There was nothing they could do, I was told. The upshot is that the only way I could stop these fraudulent transactions was to cancel my credit card!

    At least with the recent example, the company in question was completely above board. They canceled by subscription and refunded the payment when I reached out to them.
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