It's not clear to me whether you're asking if we would be OK with the
limit being removed entirely, or OK with it being set to something
higher than would ever be needed. Whilst I am very confident in
Bitfolk's ability to avoid accidental over-charges (and to promptly
issue refunds in the unlikely case that happened), and reasonably
confident in the Direct Debit Guarantee to provide a further line of
defence, I'm not keen on the idea of the limit being removed entirely
or even lifted as high as something like £5k, because if something did
go wrong[0] then it could cause me a temporary cashflow problem until
the refund was issued.
When considering potential cashflow issues, I think it becomes clear
that even a large limit is significantly more acceptable than *no*
limit. And if there is a limit, it should be visible to us, the end
customers.
Again, this all seems very far-fetched to me, but if there's an
option, I'd prefer a limit of say, £100, since I know I'll *never* be
using more than £100 worth of Bitfolk services in a given month.
I appreciate I may be asking for something with more sophisticated
safeguards than what standard Direct Debits offer, and if that's not
possible then oh well, it's not a deal-breaker. After all it's far
more likely that $RANDOM_ENERGY_PROVIDER accidentally charges me £15k
for a month. But that's not a good reason to avoid aiming higher ;-)
The most ideal solution would be for GoCardless to get off their
arses and implement their customers' feature requests rather than
close them and suggest slightly lame workarounds, but I guess that's
not an option :-/
Hope that's useful feedback,
Adam
[0] By a large stretch of the imagination, it's just about conceivable
that some weird bug in the code could accidentally put the decimal
point in the wrong place or cause some similar miscalculation.
On 21 October 2013 10:04, Andy Smith <andy@???> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If you currently pay by Direct Debit authorization then you are
> probably aware that we use GoCardless for this. If you don't then
> the rest of this email is probably not of interest to you.
>
> The way it works right now is that you create an account with
> GoCardless by giving them your bank details, and that sets up a
> Direct Debit instruction between your bank and them. Then, you
> authorize BitFolk's payment plan which asks GoCardless to allow up
> to a certain amount during a certain time period. GoCardless
> enforces the limits of that plan.
>
> That works fine, but the problem comes when you order an upgrade
> that makes your plan more expensive. At the moment we need to cancel
> your payment plan and ask you to authorize a new one. It's not a big
> deal but it is perhaps not the best user experience. When you pay
> other companies by Direct Debit they get to take whatever they want,
> so you're not asked to re-authorize when, for example, your council
> tax or gas bill goes up.
>
> GoCardless have had a feature request open for a long time that asks
> them to implement a way for users to authorize a new limit (or
> perhaps for the customer to indicate that they're not bothered).
> They have now closed this request and advise that if merchants want
> to charge varying amounts then the merchant should ask the customer
> to authorize a limit that is higher than any payment that would ever
> be normally requested, e.g. £5,000 per month.
>
> The question that immediately sprung to mind here was, "isn't my
> customer going to be a bit disturbed by being asked to authorize a
> payment plan that allows up to £5k to be taken out of their bank
> account?"
>
> Their answer to this was to add an option so that payment plans
> don't have visible (to the customer) limits any more.
>
> As I say, that is generally how Direct Debits work: you authorize
> the instruction and you're trusting the organisation to only take
> when they are actually owed. If they screw up and take too much, you
> can dispute it with your bank and it immediately gets reversed.
> There isn't normally a middle man verifying payment requests.
>
> If this was how GoCardless had worked from the beginning then I
> wouldn't have an issue, but the fact is that everyone currently with
> a Direct Debit authorization to BitFolk knows they have a limit on
> it that (barring GoCardless making a mistake) only allows the exact
> amount to be taken.
>
> Would you have a problem with that limit being removed? I'd be
> interested to get feedback from those currently using Direct Debit
> to pay. Feel free to let me know off-list if you prefer.
>
> It's been nearly a year of using GoCardless and there haven't been
> any issues of taking too much money. I would be comfortable with
> setting all future authorizations to have no limit on them, as I
> think the improvement to user experience of just being able to order
> an upgrade is worth it. If there is a massive outcry I won't do it
> though. I may also consider making it an option (defaulting to no
> limit), though there is a danger of confusing people with too many
> options.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
> --
> http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
>
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