To facilitate the process, most payment tools such as PayPal, Alipay, and WeChat have an automatic deduction feature. For example, if you purchase a VPS for one month using PayPal, you need to renew it on the billing date every month. By using the automatic deduction feature, this problem can be easily solved, making it very convenient. However...

Bug of Duplicate Charges

It is uncertain whether the recurring payment of PayPal or the merchant's system has a bug, but there is a high probability of duplicate charges when using this feature. Xiaoz has encountered this issue not only once, but also in different merchants.

• The first time was in the recurring payment of HostUS (WHMCS system).
• The second time was in ServerStadium.

In the recent ServerStadium bill, the problem of duplicate charges occurred again, as shown in the screenshot below.

Although submitting a ticket and communicating with customer service can get a refund, it still wastes time and is inconvenient for communication. It is better to manually make payments in the future.

Cancel PayPal Automatic Payments

You can cancel recurring payments in "PayPal Settings - Payments - Manage Automatic Payments." If you see merchants that you haven't used for a long time or don't recognize, you can cancel them here.

Conclusion

Not all PayPal automatic payments will result in duplicate charges. It may be a bug that occurs in specific situations. For example, if you haven't set up automatic payments at the beginning and then click "PayPal Subscription" one day to complete the payment for that bill, the system may still initiate another payment from the automatic deduction, resulting in duplicate charges. In any case, it is a good habit to regularly check PayPal's automatic payments.