I had insufficient funds on my card today, so the charge didn’t go through. Now I’m kinda second class citizen in Beeminderland until the support reads my reply about making another attempt at charging me. I think the problem is that the system is too strict in this regard. Some services try to charge the card, if it doesn’t go through they notify the user and retry in a day or two. When the charge doesn’t go through on 3rd attempt - then there are consequences and the app becomes unusable.
In some countries most cards have limit at 0 and people tend not to keep all of their money on cards. I have a checking account and in situations like this I quickly add funds to my card through an iPhone app. It works OK with Digital Ocean for example, they just try again in a day or two. But with Beeminder I’m now stuck waiting for the support to read my email.
PS: I’ve added my payment method again and everything looks good now, but I still think it’s somewhat of a overreaction on Beeminder’s side.
the charge didn’t go through. Now I’m kinda second class citizen in Beeminderland
Could you elaborate on that? I had a similar situation a week or so ago - I’ve derailed but didn’t have enough $ on that card - and didn’t notice any difference.
I’m not using the app though, web only.
But with Beeminder I’m now stuck waiting for the support to read my email.
That’s usually pretty quick though:) A matter of minutes or maybe hours in my experience.
I agree that some way of auto-resolving this issue would be nice, although I’d suggest some button in the app that triggers another charge attempt.
If your goals have deadlines aroung midnight, which, I suppose, is quite widespread, derailment charges would go through around that time too, so you could find out about insufficient funds only in the morning.
Now, if the system continues attempts to charge the card at some intervals, what would those be?
If they are too big, it’s not worth waiting for the automatic re-charge - support will respond quicker.
If they are too small, you will be flooded with SMSs from your bank about attempts to charge your card.
I vouch for manual trigger because I find it hard to pick an interval sequence that offers swift enough response time (including derail-while-I-was-sleeping scenario) and does not spam with many unnecessary charge attempts, but maybe I’m wrong.
