gpg: Signature made Tue Sep 8 12:59:54 2020 UTC
gpg: using DSA key 2099B64CBF15490B
gpg: Good signature from "Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andrew James Smith <andy@strugglers.net>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (UKUUG) <andy.smith@ukuug.org>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (BitFolk Ltd.) <andy@bitfolk.com>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (Linux User Groups UK) <andy@lug.org.uk>" [unknown]
gpg: aka "Andy Smith (Cernio Technology Cooperative) <andy.smith@cernio.com>" [unknown]
Hello,
On Tue, Sep 08, 2020 at 10:57:55AM +0100, John Winters wrote:
> And as a customer, I much prefer DD too. Continuous credit card authorities
> are potentially quite dangerous and don't have anything like the safeguards
> of DD.
Going off on a bit of tangent but yes, the Direct Debit guarantee is
very consumer-oriented as you can dispute any DD transaction (even
years old ones) without having to give a reason and you get your
money back; the merchant has to pursue you for it.
More than once I've had people say they want to pay by PayPal
because they don't trust DD, which really baffles me because PayPal
take a continuous CC authority on at least one of their cards as a
funding source, which means they gave PayPal the ability to take an
unlimited amount of money from them, over and over until the card
details expire or the card is cancelled.
While credit card providers are usually willing to entertain a
chargeback, they aren't legally obliged to. And as you say, there is
no way to stop a company with a continuous authority from charging
you again and again.
We like DD though mainly because the fees are less than the other
methods and the GoCardless API is fairly nice to work with.
Continuous credit card authority is still something that we have to
implement because non-UK customers can't use DD¹.
Cheers,
Andy
¹ GoCardless do operate in more jurisdictions, including all the
popular ones like EU, US and AU, but to take payments that way
BitFolk would have to operate bank accounts in all those
currencies, which is a bit inconvenient.
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
