A charge labeled “FYE BACKS” on your credit card or bank statement is a $13.99 monthly fee for the FYE Backstage Pass VIP program, a recurring subscription tied to the FYE retail chain and administered by a third-party company called Trilegiant Corporation. It renews automatically until you cancel, and most people find it on their statement weeks or months after being signed up at a store checkout without realizing a subscription was involved.
Cancel the Membership First
Stop the bleeding before you chase the refund. Every month you leave the account open is another $13.99 gone. You have three ways to cancel.
Online. Go to fyevip.com and log in with the email address used at signup. Open your account settings and use the cancellation option. The system should produce a confirmation number. Save it.
By phone. Call 877-351-2131, or 866-766-0251 for Spanish. The line is staffed Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern. Before you hang up, ask the agent to confirm that billing has been permanently stopped and to give you a cancellation confirmation number.
By email. Write to service@fyevip.com. Include your full name, the email on the account, and the last four digits of the card being charged. Ask for written confirmation in the reply.
Whichever route you use, keep proof. A confirmation number, a screenshot, or a saved email thread is what you’ll fall back on if charges keep posting after you thought you were done. That happens, and without documentation you’re arguing from scratch.
Ask for a Refund
Call the Backstage Pass VIP service line at 877-351-2131 and request a refund for the months you were charged. Agents can reverse recent charges, and your case is strongest when the account shows no use of any membership benefit. Refunds typically post in three to seven business days.
Be direct about the scope. If you were billed for several months without realizing you had a membership, ask for a refund of every charge, not just the last one. Some agents will offer a partial refund as an opening move. You’re not obligated to accept it. Ask for escalation, and note the date, time, agent name, and what was offered.
Dispute the Charges With Your Bank
If the program refuses to refund you, or only offers a partial credit you don’t accept, your card issuer is next. Federal law gives you the right to dispute billing errors directly with the creditor.
Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, you must send written notice of a billing error to your creditor within 60 days of the statement date that shows the charge. The notice needs your name, account number, the amount you believe is wrong, and why you think it’s an error. Send it to the billing inquiries address on the statement, not the payment address. Your creditor has to acknowledge the notice within 30 days and resolve the investigation within two billing cycles. While the investigation is open, the creditor cannot try to collect the disputed amount or report it as delinquent. If the finding goes your way, the charge and any related finance charges come off the account.
When you call your bank to open the dispute, describe the charge as an unauthorized recurring subscription. The bank picks the dispute code; card networks have specific categories for recurring charges the customer didn’t authorize or that continued after cancellation. A phone call alone doesn’t satisfy the statute’s written-notice requirement, though most banks will open a dispute based on the call. Send the written notice anyway to preserve your FCBA rights.
For charges older than 60 days, statutory protection weakens, but you may still be able to dispute them depending on your bank’s policies and your card network’s rules. Ask.
How the Signup Happens
The Backstage Pass VIP program is run by Trilegiant Corporation, not FYE store employees directly. Enrollment usually occurs at the point of sale during an in-store or online purchase. A cashier or checkout screen presents a seven-day free trial as part of the transaction flow, and customers accept it while focused on finishing the purchase. After the trial, the first $13.99 posts, and it repeats every month with no end date until you cancel.
Complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau against Trans World Entertainment Corporation, FYE’s parent company, describe a consistent pattern: customers report being enrolled without clear understanding that a recurring subscription was involved, with some saying the monthly charges were never mentioned at the register. The company’s stated policy is that credit card customers are offered the membership at purchase and given a pamphlet with terms and a cancellation number.
The Federal Law Behind Your Rights Here
Two federal laws apply directly to this situation.
Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act
ROSCA makes it illegal for any seller using a negative option feature, where silence or inaction counts as acceptance, to charge your card unless it first clearly discloses all material terms and obtains your express informed consent before charging. For a third-party seller marketing through another merchant’s checkout, the law adds two more requirements: the seller must clearly state it is not affiliated with the original merchant, and it must obtain your billing information directly from you. Violations are treated as violations of the FTC Act, so the Federal Trade Commission can seek civil penalties, injunctions, and consumer refunds, and state attorneys general can bring enforcement actions for their residents.
Fair Credit Billing Act
The FCBA protects you on the banking side. It requires creditors to investigate billing error complaints promptly and prohibits adverse action against the account while the investigation is pending. The 60-day written-notice rule described above comes from this law, and the notice has to go to the creditor’s designated address for billing inquiries to trigger the statute’s full protections.
If You’ve Been Charged for Months
People often discover the FYE BACKS line after six, eight, or twelve months of charges. At $13.99 a month, a year runs about $168. Pull your statements, total every FYE BACKS charge, and cancel the membership immediately so nothing new posts while you work on the refund. Then call the program and ask for a full refund covering every charge. If that fails, file a written FCBA dispute with your card issuer for each charge inside the 60-day window, and ask the bank what it can do about anything older.