"Linden can't be trusted with your credit card" says Evan Reuters

It seems everyone knows Reuters have left SecondLife EXCEPT the Linden Lab billing department!
According to a post by Evan Maloney on the RegAPI mailing list today he was billed $500 USD on a credit card which he only used to verify his identity on the forums.
Not only have they charged him but because he has an unverified account he cannot get the help from Linden Lab that a premium member is entitled too meaning that it could be months before he can get his money back! He writes:

Linden can't be trusted with your credit card information

Sue,

About a year ago, you helped me when I was erroneously billed $500 for
the "Reuters" surname. (For a further explanation, see below, where I
pasted the e-mail I sent to the RegAPI list last time this happened.)

Well, I have unfortunately been billed again this year for the
"Reuters" surname, despite assurances from Linden last year that you
have expunged my credit card information from your database.
Obviously, Linden still has my credit card and has not fixed the
billing problem.

I don't know why this keeps happening, but last year it took many
weeks to get sorted out and required me to spend countless hours on
the phone with my credit card company. I'd like to avoid a similar
hassle this year, and am hoping Linden can get this resolved once and
for all.

I would also appreciate it if you could handle this matter quickly, as
your billing error is causing problems for my personal finances.

If it helps, please cancel the "Reuters" surname. It's not worth the
hassle.

Thanks,
Evan

I do not have a paid Second Life account. However, a while back, in order to access
the Second Life forums, I had to create a verified account by giving Linden Lab
my credit card information.
Supposedly, that was only to be used for verifying my identity. 
However, it seems that Linden Lab may randomly bill you if they have your
credit card.
What does this have to do with the RegAPI?
Well, I am a developer at Reuters, and we use the RegAPI for, among other things,
registering users who have the Reuters surname.
We bought the Reuters surname last year, and it recently came up for renewal.
But rather than issue a bill to Reuters (or charge whoever paid for it last year),
Linden apparently decided to select a random Reuters employee to bill.
Unfortunately, that employee was me.
That was at the end of November. I have now spent several days trying to get the
charges reversed to no avail. (And, no, I can't expense it at Reuters since I
didn't have authorization to make the purchase in the first place.)
Everyone at Linden's billing support line tells me to file a support ticket.
Of course, the support website will not allow you to file a billing issue unless
you have a paid account, which I don't.
So now I'm dealing with this no-mans-land of people on the phone who can't tell me
anything (other than to go to the site) and a website that won't accept tickets
for my problem.
I finally decided to file a general ticket, and now it is "pending",
but nobody on the phone can even tell me if it will be resolved this MONTH.
Needless to say, I am disputing the charge with my credit card issuer, but that
process will take several months to complete.
Hopefully someone at Linden can take the initiative to clear this up, because
everyone on the billing issues support line has been completely unhelpful
(or maybe I should just select a random Linden employee and send a $500 bill to them).
I'm sure it will be resolved eventually, but let my tale serve as a warning:
if you use the RegAPI and want to avoid a similar headache of your own,
you may want to be sure that Linden Lab does not have your credit card information
associated with your RegAPI-enabled account.
Otherwise, they just may decide to bill you randomly like they did with me.

Source: RegAPIList

moreless