From andy@bitfolk.com Mon Sep  7 22:38:19 2020
From: Andy Smith <andy@bitfolk.com>
To: users@mailman.bitfolk.com
Subject: [bitfolk] What do you expect to happen when you authorise a Direct
 Debit mandate?
Date: Mon, 07 Sep 2020 22:38:18 +0000
Message-ID: <20200907223818.GY13298@bitfolk.com>
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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

-- 
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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