I received an email with the subject line:
Add-on product(s) expires soon
which certainly got my attention.
Same thing with the body of the email although it said: “Please log in to your account and renew the listed products, unless they are set to automatically renew on your Account page: …”
Although all my products are set to autorenew, your email made me worry enough to log in and verify it. It would be nice if you could not send such emails when all products are set to autorenew.
Regardless of the autorenew, IMHO it’s better to be reminded of it so you can check if your method of payment will still be valid on the renewal date.
I think I agree with both of the above to some extent.
We are aware that in some circumstances the auto renew emails aren’t clear and we are working on some better text for them (which also relies on changes to the system recognising how you paid). However, I do agree that having a renewal reminder is always useful.
We do see payments fail either because cards have expired or just because the bank wants some additional authentication from the customer. It hasn’t been made any easier by banks being required to use Strong Customer Authentication though in theory at least that shouldn’t affect renewals.
If the issue is an expired card, then that’s what the emails should say. Misleading subject lines are not helpful. They just teach people that such emails can be ignored - which is even worse.
If at the point we try to renew your account the payment fails we do then send an email to explain there is a problem. Despite how it may look on our website we don’t actually store your card details on our system and so we can’t tell you the card has expired in advance of trying to use it for a renewal.
In any case, if there is any kind of payment problem your account will continue to work normally for another 2 weeks (with more reminders sent to you in that period) and so it is extremely unlikely that your account will just suddenly close without you knowing there is a problem.
I agree we can improve the messaging, but we don’t encounter many customers who have problems with account suddenly closing because of a failed payment.