Automatic payment scam?

[10zackt]

I woke up to an automatic payment for my service, cool. Went to check my account and it never posted to the bill and when I contact support they said they aren’t seeing it at all, and the money is already out of my account. I also noticed that I never actually had automatic payments turned on. So what the **bleep** is going on? I’m not paying it again and I’m honestly on the verge of just cancelling my service.

[10zackt]

I’m just very frustrated when it comes to my finances.

[Remy]

10zackt,

Thanks for reaching out! I see this is your first post here. Welcome to the Community! I was able to locate your Hughesnet account through your profile, which is great. I'm able to confirm we've received your payment since this post. Has this payment posted to your bank?

Thanks,

Remy

[maratsade]

@10zackt 

Automatic payment is the company's preferred way of payment; if you have paper billing, you are charged a monthly fee (I think it's $5).  Is that your situation, that you pay a fee for paper billing? Do you get an invoice every month? If not, then you've always been on automatic payment.  None of this is a scam; these are legitimate, legal business practices. 

Did you check your account here, on this community?  Maybe give it 24 hours?  EDIT: It may not have posted to your account yet.

A Hughesnet rep on this site may reply to you and check your account to see what may be going on. If they need more info from you they will ask that you send it to them privately, and will provide you a link to do so.

You can cancel at any time, but keep in mind that if you're still under contract, you will have to pay a fine for breaking the contract.

[GabeU]

Are you sure the money isn't just on a temporary hold from your bank account? Electronic payments are often a two step process. First, a company sends through a request to the account for a hold for the specific amount of funds. When that request is made, the specific amount is then held from the account balance. The money is still there, it's just now not a part of the available balance. The money is held aside in lieu of the second step, which is the confirmation, or actual request for the money transfer from the account to said company. Within a few days (or sooner), said company performs that second step, requesting the actual transfer of those funds, at which point the money that was on hold is released to said company as the payment.

So, it's possible that HughesNet has sent out that first 'hold' request, but not yet the actual request for the fund transfer. 

This is just a guess. If you're a new customer and didn't specifically request manual payment, payments are automatically withdrawn from the account you set the service up with.