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Credit and refund of $1 to credit card account (upcoming subscription renewal)

BilCrane

I am not sure if this is a good place to ask this; there does not seem to be a category where this fits.

I recently received notice from my credit card company about a $1 charge purportedly from Quicken. Upon logging into my credit card account, I see both a $1 charge and a $1 credit from Quicken. I have seen such charges before when a vendor is verifying the validity of the credit card. I am generally aware that these transactions were to occur, so I do not get concerned. However, such transactions have also been used by scammers testing if they do have a live credit card. I suggest that Quicken should send a notice (via cell phone text message and/or email) prior to the actual transactions. This will show that the charges are legitimate. I would also suggest that the charge and credit show up on the payment history page of each Quicken account as additional assurance it was legitimate (I did not see these two transactions on mine when I checked). Does anyone else have additional thoughts on this matter?

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Comments

Chris_QPW

My thought would be to turn off automatic renewal for the Quicken subscription. Not as much for your problem but more that if timed right, like during holidays, I can get a better price from retailers.

But I definitely agree that Quicken Inc should change their procedures on handling the renewals. There really isn't any good reason I can think of that they should be "testing the credit card".

Quicken Levetta

Hello @BilCrane ,

I understand your concern about seeing a charge and then a credit. I wanted to explain the current $1.00 charge and why we do it. This isn't a scam; it is a pre-authorization for your Quicken software. We do this a few weeks before subscription renewal. As @Chris_QPW suggested, you can turn off auto-renewal to stop it from happening.

Thank you.

BilCrane

Quicken Levetta: thanks for the rapid response. I had concluded that it was indeed not a sneak attack on my CC account, but it took me a bit of effort to come to that conclusion which would have been avoided by a prior notice from Quicken.

As Chris_QPW pointed out, disabling auto-renewal avoids the $1 transactions, allows one to possibly find a better price, and avoids any issues with an invalid CC number or charging to a different CC number (compared to the previous renewal) for whatever reasons.

It seems seems disabling auto-renewal is the best option.

Quicken Levetta

Hello @BilCrane

You're very welcome. I'm glad the explanation about Quicken's advance notice for pre-authorization charges helped clarify things.

Thank you.

Boatnmaniac

…there does not seem to be a category where this fits.

Pre-authorizations are not actual credit card charges that will later be posted in the online credit card account. They are temporary charges that are intended to verify that the credit card is active and legitimate.

Did this charge download into Quicken? If so, was it downloaded as a pending transaction?. But when the actual subscription renewal charge is later downloaded this temporary pre-authorization charge will go away in the online credit card account. I am not sure if this will also delete it from the account register in Quicken. If it does not, you will need to manually delete it.

BTW, since this is a pre-authorization for your subscription renewal, if you want to have this entered into your CC account register you should use whatever category you use for Quicken subscription renewals. But personally, I would not want it entered into the CC account in Quicken so I would manually delete it.

Chris_QPW

I believe the problem isn't what is showing in Quicken, but the very fact that Quicken Inc (or whatever biller service they use) is doing this "probe" at all.

I see zero reason for it, and certainly not without a warning. This isn't like pumping gas where they have to make sure you can't pump gas without paying. If someone's credit card doesn't go through, then they just don't renew the subscription and notify the person of that.

I have every bill that I can on automatic payment, and none do this, and they send me an email with the bill beforehand and just charge the credit card on the due date. That is how you notify someone that you are going to make an automatic payment.

This "probing" has zero purpose. You do this kind of thing for setting up a bill payment checking account, you don't do it for a normal credit card bill payment.

Boatnmaniac

I don't see this as being an issue. I do see it as, perhaps, being unnecessary.

I have set up autopay with most of my billers. Most of those occur on a monthly basis and they don't do these pre-auth transactions. But there are a few where the recurring autopayments take place only 1X per year and some of them also do these pre-auths as well. Maybe it has something to do with the length of time that has passed between payments?

And then there's also the 4 hotel chains that I have online accounts with. They have had my CC info in their system for years and that is included with every reservation I make. Yet, everyone of them will do pre-auths when I make short lead-time reservations or when I do early check-ins. Why? Doesn't seem to be logical to me but they have consistently done that for years.

I agree that Quicken should be sending out a notification of the pending renewal about a month prior to the renewal date. But I don't see any issue with them doing pre-auth transactions for subscription renewals. It does allow them to know beforehand whether or not there is a CC issue that they will need to address with the subscriber before the subscription is due. That can avoid users suddenly having lack of online services and everyone scrambling to get their subscriptions reinstated after the fact.