The consumer body Which? has called for changes to the rights of consumers to cancel regular payments made through debit and credit cards.
Each year hundreds of people complain to the Financial Ombudsman as they struggle to stop money wrongly coming from their accounts.
Which? says payments should be subject to the same controls as direct debits and therefore easier to cancel.
But the banking industry says it is not liable for this type of contract.
Cancellation rights Funds are deducted from bank accounts or added to credit card bills after customers agree to what are known as continuous payment authorities (CPA).
Reg Nicholls from Cambridgeshire signed up for a virus checker for his computer as part of his internet package and agreed to a CPA.
But when he decided to change his provider, he discovered that the virus checking was now done by a separate firm which he could not trace.
As money continued to come out of his account for a service he was not using, Reg thought that, like a direct debit, he could tell his bank to stop making the payments.
However he found this was not the case.
"I wasn't really aware this was different from a direct debit. I felt really frustrated because it was my money, my account, yet I was powerless to stop the payments," he told Radio 4's Money Box programme.


source: bbc