21 Oct
2013
21 Oct
'13
10:50 a.m.
Hi Adam,
On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:15:56AM +0100, Adam Spiers wrote:
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.
It's not currently possible with GoCardless to have an unlimited
pre-authorization, all I can do is set a really big limit that is
not visible to the customer. Since the customer can't see it though,
I think it is really splitting hairs as to what the limit is;
customer may as well consider it unlimited. After all, nothing is
*truly* unlimited, right? :)
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.
Do you not have any other Direct Debit instructions set up then? Not
for your utilities, council tax, Internet, home/car insurance etc.?
As they all generally have no limit on them.
Or if they did let you set limits, would you?
See, ideally, in the part where you authorize the Direct Debit I'd
like it to be as simple as:
[Allow us to take payment by DD]
I could just about see it getting a complicated as:
Allow us to [X] always take full payment
[ ] only take $cost per $period (if you upgrade
later on then we'll need to cancel this and
re-authorize)
by DD
But to have something like:
Allow us to take:
- full payment
- $cost + 500%
- $cost + 100%
- $cost + 50%
- $cost
$per period by DD
seems like it is getting a bit complicated from a user interface
point of view, and means that it will need spelling out why exactly
we might want to take more, still doesn't prevent needing to cancel
and re-auth if they upgrade a lot, and just feels like generally
forcing people to think about things they probably never wanted to
think about.
I mean, who stops to think, "I wish I could make it so my council
could only ever take a maximum of double my monthly council tax
bill, just in case they screw up and take lots by accident."? You
just never expect that to happen. You expect them to only take what
you owe.
Shouldn't BitFolk customers expect BitFolk to only ever take what it
is owed, not implement checkboxes that promise not to screw up? :)
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 :-/
They may be regretting ever entertaining the feature request when
limits are not common on other Direct Debits, and perhaps are
wishing they never added limits to begin with.
Hope that's useful feedback,
Yep!
Thanks,
Andy
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