How have Apple found out my new Debit Card number?

A few weeks ago I thought I'd lost my wallet (I hadn't - I'd just put it somewhere unusual in a senile moment) but before I found it I cancelled my debit card and got a new one. I rent some iCloud space from Apple (79p a month's worth) and started getting daily nags on my phone that the last payment hadn't gone through. Tonight I thought I should see to it, logged on to my Apple account and found that they had my new card number - which is presumably why I didn't get a nag today.

Does anyone know how this works? Seems a bit spooky to me.

Robin.

Edit: Title should be How has Apple ... I suppose but can't edit thread title .

Edited By Robin Graham on 19/06/2019 22:39:35

Did they have your bank account details for a direct debit?

Happened to a friend of mine with her Macfee renewal. She never got a straight answer from the Bank or MacFee.

It was not a DD.

Edited By HughE on 19/06/2019 22:50:56

If you have an Alex of similar or you gave your details over the phone, they would collected the details then. Every time you use Apple device it is collecting data. Any voice activated smart device constantly collects data from you even when you are not using it!

No, I gave them only my debit card details - if it had been DD there wouldn't have been a problem, I've had no complaints from the many people I pay by DD since I got a new card.

A similar thing happened to me with Amazon Prime when my last card expired. They kept on at me for a bit and I intended to cancel but then the nagging stopped and it turned out they'd found out how to debit the new card. So I'm on Amazon Prime until the next time I forget to cancel it....

Robin.

If it happened to me, I would be demanding an immediate return of my money. Once that was sorted, the complaint to the governing authorities would follow. There would be a report of the ‘theft’ from my account, to my bank, if the money was not immediately returned to my bank account.

It's a tricky one. What Apple and the Bank did could be seen as either an unwarranted intrusion or helpful. It's helpful to customers who lose a card linked to multiple online accounts who don't want to have to reauthorise each and every one of them when the replacement arrives. This is considerable hassle!

I guess the exchange of card details is all done automatically:

• Apple's computer requests payment from Robin's Bank quoting a cancelled card number
• Bank knows why Robin cancelled the old card and also that Apple are a trusted customer, not some bloke who found a lost card in the gutter. So Bank can safely tell Apple the new number.
• Apple update their records and get paid.

The booby trap is a customer can't assume that unwanted services will stop when he cancels a card or it expires. This sort of makes sense because only the card changed, not the customers account or his agreements to pay suppliers. Generally, services should be stopped by contacting the supplier, not by chopping off the money.

Still a shock when this sort of thing happens. As mentioned by Hugh another irritation is how difficult it can be to get answers from the institutions involved. The problem is most staff the public speak to don't know the detail; they might not even be employees - could be a call-centre. Long gone are the days when bank accounts were managed by local branches staffed by a well-trained team reporting to an experienced Bank Manager. My bank closed most local branches and what's left in the High Street is an empty shell.

Dave

It is not ‘helpful’ if this ‘happening’ takes the account holder into the red. The security code changed - yes, security. Only the account holder might know how much the next transaction could remove from the account.

My wife paid a hefty insurance premium for her son, when he was out of work, and the following year the insurance company debited her account for another hefty sum. Not on. No permission requested and none given. They retained her credit card details illegally. Simple as that.

Whether it was the bank or the apple at fault is neither here nor there. Whoever it was could, and should, have informed the account holder before deucting money from the account. Just not good enough and a very unsatisfactory situation.

Stopping a service depends on the contract. If it is for a fixed time period, then that contract is finished at the expiry date. The same with bank cards - that is why they have an expiry date! Your friendly cheap car insurance would very likely not pay for a claim if the policy had expired!

Right is right and wrong is just that - wrong.

My bank recently tried to shift me onto a pinless debit card, activated by the first transaction I was going to make. They sent me a different card after a stern phone call from me. If I had wanted one, I would have asked for one. As it is, most of my transactions are cash - the debit card most often being used to withdraw cash.

Dave has it.

For all practical purposes changing debit card numbers for a bank account is the same as changing a firms phone number. Firm is still there, just have to let everyone who does business with them know the new number.

Your debit card number is, ignoring all the fancy computer and electronics side of things, just the "phone number" Apple (and everyone else) uses to call up your bank account and say "Gissa some money".

Clive

My wife and I were issued with new credit cards when the bank informed us that some people were experiencing security issues with theirs. We weren't, but accepted the new cards. I dutifully went to all the accounts I had with various businesses and changed the details. When I got to PayPal, I could find no way to edit the card details, except, I found later, by delete the existing card and go through the rigmarole of setting up a new one. It transpires that my credit card issuer ( and many more besides ) have an automatic system to update your details with traders holding your card details without your intervention. That's what happened, although it didn't happen overnight - if I remember it took about a fortnight for the change to occur.

John

'Whoever it was could, and should, have informed the account holder before deucting money from the account.' Not sure that's the case in Robin's example. If anyone agrees to a repeat contract then he's already agreed to pay again on renewal. The status of the card used to set up the transaction doesn't alter the contract.

Bank cards expire for security reasons only. They are not the same as contracts, far from it.

What Apple did might save the customer considerable trouble. Consider this example. How happy would you be if cancelling a card lost on holiday caused your car-insurance to expire while you were away and you had a serious accident on the way home?

I do sympathise though. I like to think my money is secure and under my tight control! It's not fair that important details on this sort of thing are often hidden deep inside Terms and Conditions. Small print is a right pain to read at the best of times and some of it is dishonestly obscure. All too easy to sign-off on repeat payments, sharing of personal data, and reduced rights.

Truly we live in an imperfect world!

Dave

Thanks for replies. I think Dave has explained what happened. It would have been useful if the bank had told me that recurring payments would be transferred automatically though. It's not a problem for me that Apple had their 79p - they are providing me with a service for which I have agreed to pay, and it's my responsibility to meet those payments*. It is indeed more to do with control and trust in a world in which the 'user interface' has become simpler - just hit 'Buy with One Click' and it's yours, wave the plastic at the thing on the Tube and the gates miraculously open - but what's going on behind the scenes has become correspondingly more complex and obscure, and therefore open to suspicion. It just seemed a bit spooky when my new number automagically appeared appeared in my Apple account.

I should write to the bank and ask for clarification of their policy but probably shan't get round to it!

Robin

* Quite why I rent iCloud storage when I have terabytes of local disk is another mystery. It must have seemed a good idea at the time, or maybe I had to sign up to get something else. I expect it'll come in handy one day though, like those jars of rusty screws taking up shelf space in my workshop won't.

Edited By Robin Graham on 20/06/2019 22:52:47

Never say never. I just used 5 rusty screws to fix a fence as the best match for the rusty nails already there..

pgk