It's Not Really About the $25, @LPNational

Yesterday morning, I received an email.

Subject line: "Your receipt from Libertarian National Committee."

Content summary: "CiviCRM every 1 year(s) USD25.00."

Went and checked: Yes, there was a debit card charge for $25 to the Libertarian National Committee.

Having authorized no such charge, I filed a support ticket with LPHQ, on the generous assumption that this was just some kind of data processing error.

Response:

Hi Thomas, 

I was able to cancel your yearly recurring membership for you, so you won't receive further charges in future billing cycles. 

If there is anything else you need help with, please let me know!

My reply:

[T]here was no recurring membership to cancel. I paid dues one time (after having manually renewed and/or been a monthly pledger for many years), and didn't authorize any recurring charges.

Haven't heard back.

I'd still like to believe that this was just an error.

But if it was just an error, the obvious response would have been a refund, or at least an offer of a refund.

It's not really about the $25. It's about taking the $25 without permission, and about treating/counting me as a "sustaining member" of an organization I don't want to associate with at the moment.*

Mistakes get corrected. If it's not corrected, it's just theft, and I'm definitely willing and able to deliver more than $25 worth of pain in the ass to the LNC over it.

Has anyone else out there noticed recent unauthorized debit/credit card charges from the LNC? If I'm the only one, then it looks like a mere mistake, just poorly handled. No biggie. If it's not a mere mistake, on the other hand ...

* My position for some time -- recently publicly reiterated -- has been that I won't go back to financially supporting the LNC until and unless they take steps to recover the funds embezzled by the former chair. If they do that, they'll probably get a monthly contribution, totaling considerably more than $25 a year, from me.