Adobe did a pretty good job at disclosing the "annual plan, billed monthly" aspect so they'll likely win any chargebacks. That said, your bank might just cave and reimburse you out of pocket.

Throwaways/virtual cards are my default state. If it's worth subscribing, it's worth the seconds it takes to generate and copy.

Think about it: you're in control. Not being at the mercy of... whoever is great. You said it yourself: attempt.

Why play with your money? The toys/experiences it can afford are way more fun.

Chargebacks are more effort, and IIRC, weigh negatively on you as well. Can only do so many. I expect your bank would take issue if you really relied on this strategy.

Painful to unsub? How terrible for them. I can be painful to bill. PLONK says the pause button.

Learned everything I needed to know from gyms. If they don't take a virtual card, but want bank details/etc... they're on some bullshit. Pass.

Absolutely, you have excessive chargebacks and you will find your credit card issuer “opting to end their relationship with you”.

It's rather off topic though. To date I've only encountered dispute worthy things approximately once or twice a decade. I feel the Adobe example would qualify if it happened to me though, despite the fact that it sounds as though I'd likely lose on that one.

How do you make virtual cards?

Lots of banks have them these days. In the US there's also stuff like privacy.com (unaffiliated, not even in the US personally :p)

Last I used Revolut 2 years ago, they even had a "disposable" virtual card, meaning after 1 charge it's automatically deleted.

They can force-post right past Privacy.com's veil, NYTimes did it to me. Here's what Privacy's support rep had to say about it:

> Hi, Firstname

> I've been reviewing your dispute and wanted to touch base with you to explain what happened.

> It appears that the disputed charge is a "force post" by the merchant. This happens when a merchant cannot collect funds for a transaction after repeated attempts and completes the transaction without an authorization — it's literally an unauthorized transaction that's against payment card network rules. It's a pretty sneaky move used by some merchants, and unfortunately, it's not something Privacy can block.

How does the force post get to you though? Surely that involves privacy.com participating.

Exactly. The number of times I've caught support for various companies outright lying to me is actually fairly alarming.

It's also very obviously not against the payment network rules, otherwise privacy.com wouldn't be actively participating.

This is my speculation, but I think privacy.com isn't actually in the middle as thoroughly as we think they are. They're just making up a new card number that still corresponds to my same old account, and they're responding to verification queries saying "yup, that's the right name and address, verifies just fine!", which provides the privacy they claim to.

Note, their name isn't SpendingLimit.com.

This shook me plenty and I no longer use them for anything I actually need a spending limit on. They're still good for their namesake privacy, with a very limited scope (i.e. scummy merchants), but it's a very thin veil and easy to pierce.

Aye, 'privacy.com' is who I go with. Would prefer a first-party solution like other countries/financial services.

It's a little counter-intuitive to introduce another party to improve privacy. I find it worthwhile for the pausable and vendor-locked cards.