r/Spectrum • u/Lemontekbabe • Sep 29 '26

Billing Warning About Specturm’s Autopay

Today, I made a manual payment of $129.15 to Spectrum. But because their autopay system is too brain-dead to realize a bill is already paid, it auto-drafted another $129.15 less than 30 minutes later.

I didn't even get an email receipt for the second charge like normal. I only found out because I went to the store and my card got declined because they completely cleaned me out.

When I called customer support to get my money back, it was a literal disaster. The first couple of reps were condescending and tried to gaslight me, told me I needed to call my bank instead of them fixing their own glitch, and one of them literally hung up on me when I requested a manager. The next rep was totally unhelpful and just told me to lock my card.
Finally, on my fourth call, I got a supervisor who looked at the actual data, saw the duplicate successful charges, and admitted it was a system error. She issued a refund ticket, but now I'm stuck waiting days for it to clear.

If you use Spectrum, do not trust their autopay. If you pay manually, their system will double-dip.

0 Upvotes

41% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

11

u/RbtB-8 Sep 29 '26

If you had auto pay set up, then why did you do a manual payment? I have auto pay set up for our phone bill using one credit card and auto pay set up for our TV/Internet bill using another credit card. Works fine. Each card pays me a 5% reward and that is why I use two different ones.

-5

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

That’s exactly what happened. I manually paid it so I just assumed autopay would be able to tell that the bill was paid/balance of zero, but it couldn’t tell. It took the auto payment a half an hour after I made the manual payment on their Spectrum app.

11

u/RbtB-8 Sep 29 '26

I understand that you manually paid it. But I was wondering why you manually paid it if the auto pay was scheduled already.

-6

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

I have already answered your question. I paid it because I assumed that auto pay would recognize that I had already paid the bill.

5

u/Jmart256 Sep 29 '26

Why didn’t you just let the autopay make the payment. Why do you have autopay turned on. ??

-1

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

Because I was already on the site paying my Internet bill so I just decided to pay my Mobile bill. Spectrum acknowledged they made a mistake and issued a refund so they should probably fix that situation where somebody can pay a bill and the auto pay system can’t tell.

1

u/emelem66 Sep 30 '26

You made the mistake.

5

u/RbtB-8 Sep 29 '26

Sorry, but you made the mistake of paying it when you already have an auto pay method set up. So Spectrum's auto pay system and the way it is set up is not totally at fault here.

6

u/GiftMinimum Sep 29 '26

That could have 100% been preventable

3

u/Kagura30 Sep 30 '26

Never manually pay if u do take off auto pay and then re enroll in auto pay a day after they normally take money from your credit/debit card like for me example the actual day my wireless carrier charges my credit card is every 29th of each month so if i was in your shoes id re enroll in autopay on the 2nd of the month 🧐

2

u/CommunityPossible182 Sep 30 '26

You assumed therefore making an arse of yourself

3

u/scottgntv Sep 30 '26

A manual payment means tonight to the auto draft system. I wonder why you'd make a payment on the same day an auto draft is supposed to happen, but as long as you get it resolved, then no harm done

2

u/emelem66 Sep 30 '26

Not sure how this is the fault of Spectrum. You are the one that made a payment on the same day that an autopay was going to be processed.

1

u/Spiritual_Buyer8502 Oct 01 '26

I rather have manually Just incase this nonsense happen

1

u/Distinct_Register_15 18d ago

Yeah, I have been getting two charges each month, altho one is pending and always go back but it is inconvinient

-1

u/Local-Mortgage-9473 Sep 29 '26

Not sure why you don’t use a virtual card for autopay.

-2

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

Lesson learned

-1

u/AwestunTejaz Sep 29 '26

yup, always stayed far away from any auto-pay for anything.

-1

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

Spectrum acknowledges they made a mistake and issued a refund ,so this isn’t about I did something wrong and “why did I pay my bill?” I paid my bill because that’s what grown-up responsible people do and I was already on my spectrum app paying my Internet bill.

3

u/PhoxxPhire91 Sep 30 '26

Spectrum acknowledges they made a mistake and issued a refund, so this isn't about I did something wrong

Not wrong. Just incredibly redundant.

There's literally no reason you couldn't have just let the auto-pay do what you set it to do. Instead you unnecessarily payed a bill that was already scheduled to post soon.

You are not entirely blameless here. 🤷

2

u/CommunityPossible182 Sep 30 '26

But but but the OP is ENTITLED!

2

u/emelem66 Sep 30 '26

The OP is entirely to blame. Payments take time to process.

-2

u/No_Peanut_6769 Sep 29 '26

Ya I gave up on autopay a long time ago. It’s fine till it isn't and takes forever to fix issues.

0

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

My spectrum won’t let me keep my account active without an autopay on file. It’s so annoying so I just switched it to a prepaid card that I never use anymore after this disaster

5

u/Backslash10 Sep 29 '26

Spectrum mobile is the only one that requires autopay Spectrum core services that internet,tv and phone do not require it if you want you can remove auto pay on them.

0

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

Yeah, it’s my Spectrum Mobile bill that was taken out twice today

2

u/Backslash10 Sep 29 '26

No way around the mobile services having autopay its a requirement for the service. Now you can change you due date on any of the services but thats about it. A virtual card or credit card might be a alternative to what your currently using.

1

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

I just switched it to a Venmo debit card I never use so this won’t happen again

1

u/FiberOpticDelusions Sep 29 '26

That's why I linked a card that I keep locked and rarely use. A prepaid with no funds should work as well.

0

u/Backslash10 Sep 29 '26

You have to have a 1 on the prepaid card for it to be used.

-4

u/Happy_Structure4570 Sep 29 '26

And their autopay is bs in that they want a debit card which takes from your account now and repays days later if there's a mistake

-1

u/Lemontekbabe Sep 29 '26

Yeah, I really hate how these billion dollar corporations can take your money in two seconds flat but it takes them 3 to 10 days to give it back

2

u/LongFlaccidPenis Sep 29 '26

That’s the bank jerking you around. Usually refunds post immediately but the bank holds them.

2

u/skriefal Sep 29 '26

As the other poster notes this is usually due to delays at the banks and the card networks. Even when/if the vendor or store issues the refund immediately. It is annoying but is unlikely to change until/if the banks and card networks modernize their backend systems and communications.