Keeping credit cards on file needs the vendor to jump through all the hoops required for PCI compliance.
I agree that some customers rarely log into the portal. I'd miss an urgent message if it was only there and not emailed.
I'd have thought that, at the point where a customer expresses a wish to pay by DD, you should offer the choice of using the DD to clear outstanding debt. If they use the portal to set up DD payments, they should either do a one off card payment via the portal, or tick a box authorising use of DD for that purpose. Make that a precondition for setting up DD, then customer has to make a conscious choice.
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On 8 September 2020 06:50:38 BST, Paul Lewis <paul@???> wrote:
>Can you not just keep credit card details on file and charge
>automatically? That’s what e.g. AWS does, and I can’t use their service
>without a credit card on file.
>
>From personal experience, my issue with b) is that I almost never log
>into the Bitfolk web portal, so I simply wouldn’t see those warnings.
>If these customers are ignoring warning email after warning email, what
>makes you think they would see (or heed) a warning in the panel?
>
>Could you also capture mobile contact details and have an automated
>sms/telegram sent to customers in parallel with the emails? I’d have
>thought most people would be more likely to receive and acknowledge
>those types of notifications?
>
>Kind regards,
>
>Paul
>
>Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse brevity, spelling, and punctuation.
>
>On 7 Sep 2020, at 23:38, Andy Smith <andy@???> wrote:
>
>Hello,
>
>There is a frequent cause of confusion with Direct Debit.
>
>The way Direct Debit works is, first you authorise an organisation
>to make Direct Debit requests. This is called a Direct Debit
>mandate. That gets sent to your bank. Once your bank accepts it the
>organisation can then request funds from your bank.
>
>At present BitFolk only requests funds by Direct Debit when there is
>a mandate in place and:
>
>a) A new invoice is created, or;
>
>b) You go into the Panel and select one or more invoices to pay by
> Direct Debit.
>
>Notably what does NOT happen ever is that invoices which already
>exist are suddenly submitted by Direct Debit.
>
>So what happens quite often is:
>
>1. Invoice for ongoing service is created and emailed to customer.
>
>2. Customer ignores this for some period of time.
>
>3. A nagging automated email is sent saying this is going to be due
> soon. Quite often ignored for some time.
>
>4. A more strident yet still automated nagging email is sent saying
> that it would be a really good idea to consider paying this now
> as otherwise there might be a loss of service.
>
>5. Customer decides that Direct Debit would be convenient and does
> authorise a Direct Debit mandate now, but doesn't actually pay
> the outstanding invoice(s) by any means because they think they
> have now told us to take payments by Direct Debit and that it
> will just happen.
>
>6. Invoice is now weeks overdue and an automated email is sent out
> saying that the service is now going to be suspended for
> non-payment.
>
>7. Since non-payment suspensions are manual, we think to check if
> the customer recently authorised a Direct Debit mandate. If they
> did then we consider it likely that they thought that would do
> the job, so we have to contact them and explain and ask if they
> did actually want this existing invoice paid by DD. This is
> annoyingly manual, takes time, and is sometimes hard to explain.
>
>There have been a non-zero number of occasions where we have
>forgotten to check for a mandate in step #7 and have suspended the
>customer's service for non-payment.
>
>There have been many occasions where customers have received the
>"you're being suspended for non-payment" email of step #6 and
>contacted us in a panic.
>
>Every time there is one of these misunderstandings I explain why
>this happened and ask how they would like it to be changed so that
>it doesn't happen any more, but sadly I have never really received
>any concrete suggestions even from the people it has happened to. I'm
>pretty sick of this happening so I want to do something about it.
>
>So, I shall ask all of you, how would you expect it to work?
>
>a) As soon as a mandate is authorised, just charge all existing
> invoices immediately
>
> Very tempting. Very simple. I fear there will be at least one
> person that will claim they never expected that to happen, and a
> returned Direct Debit has caused them to incur an eleventy
> billion pound penalty charge from their bank, their mortgage
> payment got rejected, and now there are men outside in shiny
> leather jackets.
>
>b) As soon as the mandate is authorised, if the customer has
> existing invoices that are unpaid, there is a very noticeable
> message on the screen like:
>
> You seem to have unpaid invoices:
>
> #41234 £107.88
> #41239 £1.92
>
> Pre-existing invoices won't be automatically submitted for
> payment by Direct Debit. You can <a href="…">pay them now</a>
> by a one-off Direct Debit or any of our other supported
> payment methods.
>
>I like (b).
>
>I am open to other ideas if you have any. I can't really think of
>any.
>
>I understand that many people will be happy with (a), but I feel
>it's one of those things that when there is someone that is unhappy,
>they are very unhappy, and that wipes out the good feelings from the
>many more people that never had a problem.
>
>Cheers,
>Andy
>
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