Ever regret supporting a candidate? At least one Donald Trump supporter knows that feeling, and apparently, they’re unable to stop their recurring donations to his campaign, Mic reports.
The outlet investigated, and said that there’s no transparent option to stop the monthly donations at DonaldJTrump.com. Well, there is a way to cancel, “but only if you register your account by setting a password and navigate through a labyrinthine process.”
News on this broke Wednesday, when CNN’s Jeremy Diamond tweeted this message from a regretful Trump supporter.
INBOX: Help, I set up a recurring contribution to Trump’s campaign & want to cancel it: (cc: @realDonaldTrump) pic.twitter.com/TFOHhdZDlJ
— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) August 4, 2016
The person claimed they couldn’t cancel monthly donations to the campaign. To be clear, this isn’t a matter of refunds. This is a matter of stopping future payments. Supporters can contribute at Trump’s campaign site, and they’re given a choice between making one-time or recurring donations.
Mic tested this by signing up for a monthly $1 contribution. They found there’s no clear option to cancel, though users can update their card information.
For contrast, and they checked out opponent Hillary Clinton’s donation page, and that does provide transparent methods to cancel a monthly payment. Clicking on a “Remove Card” button stops monthly payments to the Democrat, a campaign representative told Mic.
But as said before, there is a way to cancel a Trump donation, but it’s a bit of a mess.
1) You’ve got to sign up for an account and password.
2) Click on a small gray question mark icon the upper-right hand corner.
3) From there, you’ll be sent to another page with the option to make more contributions. There should be a “Manage” button on the lower left-hand corner. Click on that.
4) You’ll be sent to a separate website run by the campaign vendor, and there should be an option to access “recurring plans.” That should then finally give you an option to cancel payments.
5) But they’ll keep your credit/debit card info anyway until you replace it with another card. There’s apparently no way to delete it from their system.
Easy peasy?
We’ve reached out to the Trump campaign for comment, and will update if we get a response. Trump’s people didn’t get back to Mic, but the Federal Election Commission did.
“Our regulations do not speak specifically to that issue,” FEC spokesman Christian Hilland said, though he added that it would be a problem if a person’s total monthly donations went over the federal maximum limit of $2,700.
[Screengrab via The Associated Press]
Update – August 6, 3:16 p.m.: The FEC got back to our request for comment. From Christian Hilland, their Deputy Press Officer:
Federal campaign finance law and agency regulations do not speak directly to the issue of the cancellation of recurring online contribution payments. The Commission reviews campaign finance reports to ensure that each contribution disclosed is within the applicable limits and received from federally permissible sources.
Anyone who feels that a violation of federal campaign finance law and Commission regulations occurred is permitted to file a complaint.
In addition, we are unable to comment of any particular candidate, committee or situation for the potential for matters to come before the agency.
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