A charge from braingametime.com on your card or bank statement is almost always a recurring subscription fee from an online brain-training service, usually one that started as a free trial and rolled over into paid billing when it wasn’t canceled in time. Less often, it points to a sign-up by someone else on the account or an unauthorized transaction. Either way, you can stop it, and in many cases get the money back.
Why the Charge Looks Unfamiliar
The name on a statement doesn’t always match the service you remember signing up for. Companies bill under a parent name, a website URL, or a payment processor, so a line item can look like a stranger even when it isn’t. Start by searching the exact descriptor, “braingametime.com,” and checking your email (including spam and promotions folders) for confirmations, receipts, or welcome messages around the transaction date. Ask anyone else authorized on the card whether they signed up. If the payment ran through Stripe, Stripe offers a lookup tool that identifies the business behind a descriptor.1Stripe. Charge You Don’t Recognize From Stripe
Services like this typically use a free-to-paid conversion model. You hand over a card at sign-up for a free trial, and if you don’t cancel before it ends, billing starts automatically and repeats on a set cycle. In regulatory language this is a “negative option”: your failure to cancel counts as consent to be charged.2FTC. Do You Have Thoughts on Negative Option Related Regulations
How to Cancel and Get a Refund
Contact the company first. Look on braingametime.com for cancellation instructions, a support email, or a contact form, and cancel through whatever channel it offers. Keep a written record of the request, including the date and method you used, in case you need to prove later that you asked.3FTC. How to Stop Subscriptions You Never Ordered
If billing continues after you cancel, or if you never authorized the charge to begin with, go to your card issuer. You can open a dispute (also called a chargeback) through the issuer’s app or website, or by calling the number on the back of the card. A follow-up letter to the issuer’s billing-inquiry address strengthens the claim on paper.4FTC. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
If the charge is pulled directly from a checking account rather than a credit card, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recommends notifying both the company and your bank in writing to revoke authorization for future debits. You can also ask the bank to place a stop-payment order on transactions to that merchant, though the bank may charge a fee. One caution: stopping the payment doesn’t cancel the underlying subscription. That step has to be done separately with the merchant, or new charges can keep generating even if the bank blocks them.5CFPB. How Do I Stop Automatic Payments From My Bank Account
Your Rights on a Disputed Charge
Several federal protections apply when you push back on a subscription charge.
Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, your liability for an unauthorized credit card transaction is capped at $50. To use this protection, send a written dispute to your card issuer within 60 days of the statement showing the error. The issuer must acknowledge the dispute within 30 days and resolve it within 90 days. While the investigation is open, the issuer cannot report you as delinquent on the disputed amount, take collection action on it, or close the account over it.4FTC. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
The Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) bars online sellers from using negative-option billing unless they clearly disclose all material terms before taking payment information, get your express informed consent, and give you a simple way to stop the recurring charges. Section 5 of the FTC Act separately lets the FTC pursue companies for unfair or deceptive subscription practices, including inadequate disclosures and cancellation processes designed to be hard to complete.
One rule you may have read about is not currently in force. The FTC’s “Click-to-Cancel” rule, finalized in October 2024, would have required companies to make cancellation as easy as sign-up. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated it in July 2025, calling it “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion.”6FTC. Negative Option Rule The FTC opened a new rulemaking in March 2026, but no replacement rule is in effect right now.2FTC. Do You Have Thoughts on Negative Option Related Regulations Roughly 30 states have their own automatic-renewal or negative-option laws, and some (California among them) go beyond current federal requirements.
Where to File a Complaint
If the charge was unauthorized, or if the company won’t let you cancel without unreasonable hurdles, you can report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov or to your state attorney general’s office.3FTC. How to Stop Subscriptions You Never Ordered If your bank won’t resolve a billing dispute, you can file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or your state banking regulator.7FTC. Payments You Didn’t Authorize Could Be a Scam