Comment by DivingForGold
7 hours ago
3 or 4 years ago I tried Google Adwords to see if I could gain new customers. I admit I had a niche business, it was already successful, but I had read prior about certain tech companies overcharging - - or not cancelling services after you requested, so I opted to use only pre-paid credit cards bought at my local drug store. I chose $200 limit per card. That lasted for about 1.5 to 2 years, several times Google emailed me that my card expired or ran out of $$, and I needed to correct the error. That's when I bought another pre-paid card for a limit of $200 and funded my acct again. I never noticed any uptick in customers contacting me from my websites.
Eventually Google shut down the ability to use pre-paid credit cards (it came back an error when I attempted to enter the new card no) and that's when I closed my account. Their response was too obvious evidence <Goggle in conspiracy with the ad click bots> desired the ability to scam my account and one day I would check my email and get a $5,000 bill.
There is a rather obvious "conflict of interest" when you have to dispute a charge with your credit card provider knowing that the credit card co is fully aware they only make their "cut" if the charge goes through.
Prepaid credit cards tend to be a very common fraud vector (very similar to gift card scams).
For chargebacks, the merchant has to pay at least a $15 fee on every chargeback, regardless of the outcome of the result. It's why many merchants prefer for you to contact them and ask for a refund rather than going through the chargeback process. For small purchases, merchants tend to just refund rather than dealing with an angry customer that's going to charge back.
On the other hand, prepaid credit cards seem to be one of the only ways to prevent merchants from "running up" the charges on a customers account. Sure, a customer can go through the dispute process but it's quite a hassle. Just "limiting the amount of money you place on the table" is quite effective. Giving a merchant your credit card with say a $5,000 or more available balance seems like insanity, like laying out 50 of $100 bills on the table: "here, go ahead, can I trust you to take only what you should" ? I would pay extra to have a VISA or MC credit card that only offers say a $200 limit, just for dubious situations, but again, providers have a "conflict of interest" in that they only make their "cut" when the charges go through, so the more and the larger the charges - - the more "cut" they obtain.
A prepaid card doesn't prevent you from being liable for a bill. This is like how leaving your wallet at home when you visit a resteraunt doesn't entitle you to free food because they don't charge you up front.
3 replies →