New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Ensuring invoices get paid: How to avoid losing deals
Turbo_Pascal
Member
in Help
Thanks to this community, I've collected some pretty amazing recurring deals. Are there common reasons why customers can lose such deals? I'm specifically wondering about invoices that should be easily paid, but may still "slip through the cracks".
For instance, I have an invoice that is due a few days from now. The mail alert I received indicates it will be automatically paid on the due date with the credit card I originally used when signing up. Is my best option to simply trust that process, or should I actively sign in and force payment some other way?
My worst case scenario is being forced into a new, more expensive price because of a payment failure. This is what I want to avoid.
Comments
If you don't trust them to handle the automatic payments and you think they might use the non-payment to trick you into more expensive plans, why the hell are you doing business with them?
edit: I handle my vps billing the same as all my other bills, autopay on some things and manual on others. It never occurred to me to have the concerns you're voicing. Now I'm nervous!
just to clarify you're worried about the data center canceling you because it doesn't automatically pay?
They've been good to me. I have no actual reason to be paranoid. Just making sure I'm covering my bases.
Yes. The card is valid. Just wondering if automatic payment is a reliable way to keep an account in good standing.
No, pretty much you’ll stay on the same price and most providers will give at least 24 hours grace to pay. You’ll most certainly get suspended first before being cancelled. And you’ll typically have loads of warning before that happens.
But even if it’s cancelled, providers will likely happily reactivate and let you pay the same rate as before if you ask nicely but otherwise assume the moment the discount is lost is when the service is actually marked as cancelled.
I recently lost a 8€/y deal because the mxroute email server rejected it.
I told them, if they could please fix their (VPS provider) mailserver, they didn't seem to give a single fuck.
So yea.
PayPal subscription with multiple cards linked to the PayPal account?
I royally hate PayPal, but I guess I can consider.
Yeah this one could goes well too. If user/providers don't mind their fees.
Most providers I use give 7 days after invoice due date for cases like this. Only after the 7 days, they will delete the instance.
I am guessing it's more likely that a provider will jack up the price than delete anything.
Fair enough, but honestly if any provider DID do this to me I'd take it as a sign that they were shitbags I didn't want near my data anyway.
Surprised nobody's suggested just keeping an inventory of your servers and their due dates. A simple calendar would be enough, or if you want something a bit fancier you can use this, (although I don't think it does notifications or any kind of calendar sync): https://github.com/cp6/my-idlers
Thanks, but that doesn't address the question. The question is how to pay, not when to pay.
Usually the providers have some automated subscriptions, whether is Paypal subscriptions, Paypal agreements or even payment by credit cards.
All you have to do is keep track of your bank card. When a new card is released by the bank, check your Paypal account and switch automated subscriptions and agreements to new card, or check the bank statement o yourr bank account to see which automated payments you did with old card to change into new card.
Usually Paypal makes things simpler because it is all in one place, easily to change.
If you decide eg a month before renewal you wish to keep, sign in and add credit to cover the renewal.
That was my first thought. However I've noticed at least one provider disabling that feature. I think that's actually how I started getting paranoid.
Some will disable it but if you raise a ticket and explain the purpose 9 out of 10 will raise an credit deposit invoice for you.
add credits to your account enough for one month and use paypal subscription to automatically pay every month. when an invoice is generated it will autopay using your credits and the paypal autopay will refill your credits because you paid for an invoice thats already paid. this way you're always one month ahead.
Some systems use a function to automatic reload if budget is under a certain amount. For example under €50 it adds €100 to the account via paypal or credit card.
Some just think and know where to pay and how much.
Another people use a task or calendar to be reminded about it.
You got me scared now. So if I disable spam filtering, everything should land to inbox right?
Most likely got blocked already before.
Their email server they using to send stuff is misconfigured, I told them but yea.
If the panel does not offer a function for manual renewal and you wanna keep something definitely for longer then just open a ticket at any time asking for early renewal.
Most providers will simply generate an invoice for you and you can be done with it.
Credits will not help you if the price is increased. Immediate renewal will.
No, mxroute does still drop mails before it reaches any of their spam filters afaik.
Humble suggestion for providers: If you stop accepting American Express while accounts are supposed to renew automatically with American Express, then maybe let people know? And don't allow mail to go out explicitly stating a specific card will be charged automatically, when in fact what will happen is an alert for a past due invoice, and said card will not be charged.
This completes today's rant. Carry on.