We donated $19.95 to a website I'm part of. Used a credit card for the donation. This happened last year (March 2021). I got an e-mail about the donation, but deleted the e-mail thinking it was bogus. Yesterday, I looked up our account of the credit card, to see how much "available" credit we still have to buy something online and found out the website used that credit card to automatically donate another $19.95 to their website. They never asked us if we wanted to donate again, they just took the money off our credit card automatically. We didn't want to donate this year, but. Then, on top of this, the "donation" stated that it was from a credit card on PayPal. I already knew that we had closed our PayPal account, but looked online at it anyway. The credit card in it had expired in 2018 and wasn't the one that had been used for the donation anyway. The credit card company told me to call back next Monday, if the charge is still showing, and they would take care of it.
Sorry I use credit cards for all donations and have never been charged for something I didn't authorize....Since you say you deleted the email you don't know whether you actually give authorization.
The e-mail was only to inform us of the donation that we made again. No "authorization" in it that we did it. I read the e-mail. I really don't know why, and I sent an e-mail to the website asking them "why did you use our credit card to authorize a donation that we didn't approve?", but haven't hear back from them. Al, this was the first online donation that we've ever made to a website. Neither my wife nor I was very happy to see a donation made without our approval, but that is exactly what happened in this case.
Some things are set to automatically renew, unless you specify that it does not, and this might be what has happened to you, @Cody Fousnaugh . Unless you get it fixed this time, they will probably charge you again next March. When I got my Fitbit, it came with a year’s free subscription to their website, so I did that, but made a note in my calendar to be sure and cancel it when the year was up, because then they start charging you each year for the membership. If I didn’t cancel ahead of time, it I was set to automatically renew.
We had that done to our Norton Anti-Virus program. It was on auto-renew. It cost us $99 thru the auto-renew, where as I could've got it for $49 on their website. IOW, took off the auto-renew to late, but it's off now.
Have you cleared the Trash folder on your email account? That deleted message might still be there. I've had a couple of places I stopped donating to because their sneaky donation website has all sorts of spots where "Double my Donation" and "Make This Recurring" were pre-checked and were buried (hidden) in a chaotic design. Every click-through page to make the donation seemed to have some spot automatically set to "Give More." This stuff makes me feel used when I've tried to be nice and help. It also makes me angry.
@Cody Fousnaugh , they are very sneaky. They probably had permission to make yearly donations hidden way down in the small print. Most people never read the small print. I fell for that once, too. I can't tell you how to get your money back but you can stop them from getting it next year, the year after, etc. Go to your PayPal account..... click on payments.... it will show who you have made payments to... each one will say inactive or active. If it says inactive, you only made one payment. If it says active, you have committed to yearly payments. If it says active, click on cancel. That will stop payments.