[labster]

This is why I will never pay for YouTube Premium. Imagine having a recurring charge that you can’t terminate because your account was deleted for some unrelated service, and you have no phone number or office to contact.

Limit your interactions with Google to only the services you most need, and you will probably be safe. It’s too dangerous to go all-in on Google, because you could lose your entire digital footprint from an AI bot with no recourse other than HN and Twitter.

[filleduchaos]

Do you not have a bank? Why would you be unable to terminate a recurring charge on any payment method you actually own?

[browningstreet]

Banks don’t always let you cancel a credit card charge if you’ve authorized it but then can’t get ahold of the charging entity. It happened to me. I couldn’t get my credit card company (Wells Fargo in this case) to stop a recurring charge but they did let me cancel my credit card account and move my banking accounts away to another bank.

That said, I do pay for YouTube Premium.

[filleduchaos]

Ah, I'm not an American and that's very wild to me. I have never had trouble getting my bank to honour an order to stop payments, although it takes a few business days to process

[hedora]

The charge is tied to the continued existence of your gmail, gdocs, third party login with google account, gcp, and anything else you trusted google with.

[filleduchaos]

In the scenario given your account has been deleted - if you still have access to other Google services, then you can just use the web interface to cancel the problematic subscription?

[msla]

If you stop them from debiting your bank account, wouldn't they just send your account to collections?

[filleduchaos]

I don't know how US collections works since I don't live there, but none of the financial systems I've ever interacted with give merchants any entitlement to future money for a service they are no longer providing

[Sander3Utile]

Just use privacy.com to make burner cards with a fixed amount as a fail-safe for this

[madeofpalk]

> Imagine having a recurring charge that you can’t terminate because your account was deleted for some unrelated service

Has this actually happened - does Youtube Premium still charge for accounts that have been terminated? Or is this just FUD?

[ModernMech]

This happened to me. The only way to contact customer service is after you log in, so the only thing you can do to cancel is to cancel your credit card or report the charge as fraud... which says a lot about the service.

[Tao3300]

If it was happening, what would be your recourse? Call customer service?

[madeofpalk]

It's an unproved hypothetical situation. What would be your recourse if your uncle started reporting false debts to your name whilst you were travelling around Italy?

In the past I have contacted YouTube Red support in the past when I didn't cancel my subscription after I moved counties and they easily refunded a few months of charges. Unsure how that would play out if your account was cancelled. I would probably just contact my bank to get the charges blocked + reversed.

[metric10]

Call your credit card company. They can block a merchant, perform a chargeback, and/or issue a new credit card number. I don’t know the rules for a debit card, but you’ll at least be able to get a new debit card number.

[aaomidi]

A chargeback? Lol

[suddenclarity]

You can always block your card. Takes a few days to get a new one and might be a bit of a hassle to update PayPal and other services where you have it stored. Not ideal but I don't think anyone should lose sleep over it.

[makeitdouble]

I don't know if this advice is for yhe only, or it's for companies that won't go after you for small fees.

Otherwise there's always recourses for a company to recover the fees that were due and couldn't charge through your credit card. You'd then have to dispute a court order to recover it from your employer for instance. You can of course battle it then, but it's a lot more hassle than to have the charge disputed in the first place (the dispute goes back to the company, who has to prove their point)

[HumanOstrich]

> You'd then have to dispute a court order to recover it from your employer

That's not how any of this works. A company doesn't just send someone over to the courthouse to speak to the manager and get a court order to garnish some random person's wages over $20 in declined subscription charges. Lol.

[makeitdouble]

I actually experienced this first hand on a random invoice that got lost after moving to another town.

As a company you file an official claim that goes through a court, usually the other party won't show up, and you're awarded a judgement in your favor. That judgment allows you to request recovery of the funds in many ways, including asking the person employer to pay you first before paying them, repossessing their godds, houses whatever the court allows you to do of there's no other option.

E.g. in NZ: https://communitylaw.org.nz/community-law-manual/chapter-26-...

> lol

For people baffled by all of this, many countries will have stronger laws to protect lenders and service providers than just telling them "tough luck" when you refuse to pay for received goods/services.

[Obscurity4340]

Also there's several apps on various platforms that are more private and free

[CydeWeys]

I don't think your hypothetical scenario is possible.

[capableweb]

It very much is. I haven't personally been affected by Google charging any account after being suspended, but I have been affected by Facebook suspending my account while not pausing running ads on Instagram and Facebook, leading to charges still being made after I had no way of turning them off.

We're at least two people this has happened to :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35836221

[CydeWeys]

All of those anecdotes are about Facebook though. Does Google have this bug? The two software stacks are completely different.